Easter will soon be here and I went to a demo on decorating cupcakes and I thought, “shoot, I can do that, it doesn’t look difficult at all.”

That’s really easy sitting down watching someone who knows what she’s doing and can make it look easy.

The woman giving the instruction, my friend Iris, says it’s all about practice.  “If you practice, you’ll get good at it,” she said.  That’s probably true and in my mind I’m thinking, “how the hell am I going to eat all those “practice” cupcakes?”

So I went home and decided I’d give it one practice try.  As you can see, if you’re not a cake decorator, this is how your cupcakes will look.

These are Easter egg nests.  I frosted chocolate cupcakes (chocolate?  for Easter?  Yes, I like chocolate, thank you very much – and it’s practice, remember?) and then piped a nesty thing around the edge to hold my jelly bean eggs.  Iris used foil wrapped chocolate eggs in hers but how do you keep from getting all the icing on your fingers when you unwrap the eggs?  So I went with jelly beans.

They look okay but they don’t look “exciting” do they?  So I thought, “I’ve got some coconut that I use on my yoghurt topping for breakfast, I’ll make a bunny.”  Now the trick to the ears is to use a marshmallow.  Cut it in half and dip the cut side in colored sugar.  Blam – bunny ears.  Just tuck them in the icing so they don’t fall off.  Bunnies without ears can’t hear a thing.

Then I had to come up with eyes, nose and a mouth.  I was supposed to touch the mouth sides in the middle..  poor bunny.   I used black gel food coloring and I have to tell you, a dish of black icing looks nasty. Worse than licorice ice cream, I’m sure.  I looked at my cupcakes and thought, “PRACTICE!”

I called Iris and said I was a definite #Fail and how would I ever use up all the cupcakes I needed for the practice.  Now wait for it.  My pal Iris is a no-nonsense sort of person and she tells it just like she sees it.

“Looney, you scrape it off and start again with the same cupcake til you get it right!”

well, duh…

These are some of the ones done by Iris’ staffer for everyone to eat at the demo.  This is Iris.

She makes it look really easy.  I go to sites that have the most gorgeous cupcakes and swoon over how beautiful they are.  I’m determined to learn how to do it.  You’ll have to wait til NEXT Easter though.  Not that I’m a slow learner, there are just so many cupcakes I can eat.

I will admit this though, even poorly decorated cupcakes are pretty good with a side of home made chocolate ice cream.