Confessions of a (not so great) cook

I took a cake decorating enrichment night a couple of months ago and had a lot of fun! So we had the Relief Society Birthday Party yesterday and Wanting to use my newly found cake decorating skill, I signed up to make a cake. I had the recipe for the frosting and thought it would be easy. (I never understood how someone could be a bad cook if they had a recipe in front of them. I've always been successful following a recipe). The first thing it said was to add water and meringue powder, mix on high until it peaks. I didn't really know what that meant and after mixing for a couple of minutes I decided to add the rest of the ingredients. Once I started I realized it wasn't turning out how I thought it should be. It had great flavor, but it was clumping up and not looking much like frosting. So I decided I probably needed to follow the directions of letting it "peak." I called my mom to clarify what this meant and she told me it would take a lot of mixing and to be patient. I mixed this on high for about 1/2 hour and it still wasn't doing much. Again, the flavor was delicious but it was very grainy from the sugar and not smooth. Needless to say, I decided to go to the store and buy the frosting because mine just didn't turn out right.

(Sorry for the novel, but this isn't the end of the story) Afterwords, I realized that the recipe called for confectioners' sugar. Me, not really paying much attention, just though of it meant granulated sugar... not powdered sugar. HMMM that probably would have made a BIG difference in it not feeling so "grainy!" :)

The moral of the story... even if you have a recipe in front of you, you can still be a bad cook! :)

Here is the R.S. Birthday cake after I used the store bought frosting. The theme of mine was the month of June so I did a bright shining sun!