Then my grandma had us all beat as chefs -- she put love into everything.
Incidentally, I thought I had screwed to whole darn cake up by putting it into a 9 x 13 cake pan -- it calls for a 11 x 16 pan. Boy, did it turn out thick/tall -- and boy, did it ever turn out just as good!
Karen, I just used the ready-made tubes of colored icing in the grocery store. Wilton has a whole line. Only thing is, I've quickly discovered that the "gel" icings, while certainly a lot easier to work with, are quite a bit too runny and don't set up well at all like the regular icing types. They tend to bleed into each other too. They look good all by themselves, but I'm going to avoid them from now on.
Another note to self: Don't use powdered sugar, like I did, to form a "base" to put your image on. The icing refuses to cling to the surface because of the dry powdered sugar on top.
Another note to self: If you're ever going to put an image on such a cake again, skip the nuts in the icing. It makes for more texture in the "canvas" than necessary.
