There's no trick to it. It firms up on its own as it cools. I've had success by nuking frosting at 50% in 5 second increments until it's just barely just liquified. I test by stirring. It only needs to be warm enough to be dip-able. In my mind, (your mileage may vary) warming the frosting in a shallow, flat-bottomed container, barely bigger than your cubes, would be less messy than pouring... you could dip one side at a time, and if you worked quickly, your finger marks in the frozen cake would fall out as it cooled. I learned this trick from an awesome book I bought my niece and nephew for Christmas. They describe the technique on pages 18 & 19, which you can see by clicking on the "search inside this book" link, entering the work "microwave" in the search pane, selecting the second search result, and turning to page 19 with the right hand arrow. (For the record, the book is way fun!) I tried this dipping technique with cupcake frosting and the results were so flawless that the ladies I served them to assumed I'd done something very difficult and fancy. The punchline was that it took less time to dip (from scratch) cupcakes into warmed white Duncan Heinz frosting (with a bit of yellow food coloring and lemon extract added) than it would have taken to frost by the traditional method. The frosting firmed up a bit and they looked beautiful. This book also demonstrates a stupid-simple technique of drawing a design on a paper template, slipping the template on wax paper, melting some colored wafers, spooning them into a ziploc, cutting a tiny hole in the corner, and drawing on the wax paper. To see an example, enter the word "monarch" in the search pane and see pages 77-79. Or just buy the book. It's a fun jumping-off point for the imagination.

Last night was class 2 of my decorating class. This time it wasn't so bad. We brought in our own icing and practiced making stars, lines, dots and writing out Happy Birthday on plastic covered pictures of what we were practing. Sort of like tracing. I made a mean star. Circles were okay, gotta learn how to not get that little tip on the center of it. My writing stinks. Maybe practice makes perfect? Next week we take in already baked cupcakes and we'll be making clowns and roses. Looking forward to learning to make a rose. The instructor still licked her fingers all night long and I can't help but wish she would wax her mustache. There is one girl in the class who came with her mother; very immature, yelling out things, giggling uncontrollably, just really acting strange and I honestly thought she was a mentally challenged teenager. Come to find out, she is 10 yrs old. All along she's just been acting like a 10 yr old girl. But she sure does look older. Another woman, her husband died 18 mths ago. I didnt know this and had no way of knowing ... anyway and when she cut the cake last week, I sang, "The Bride Cuts and Cake"....... oye vey! She then sang, "The Widow Cuts the Cake".......I wanted to crawl into a hole. Well, she wasn't there last night because she was too sad; yesterday would have been her husband's birthday. Another woman who has taken this course before and never went onto Course II. She is the class know-it-all. She's getting on my last nerve I tell ya. The woman next to me, if the instructor touches her things, moves them in any way, she freaks and it messes her up. So now the instructor knows not to touch her things. The woman opened up her Decorating Kit and her spatula wasnt in a plastic bag and her brush didin't have a cap on it, she had the instructor return it and get her one that "someone hadn't already used". I would have switched with her but I had already stuck my spatula into the icing. She was being so anal about everything, more so than me and I couldn't help but cackle when she found a hair in her icing an it was her own. hahahaha! Interesting night~

Ditto on the photo, Tracey! Lovely cupcakes!! My largest tip is #789, and even though I do have some large couplers, there is no way my 789 will fit with the coupler. I bought it at Michaels and asked the woman there just how do I use it if I don't have a coupler. It has a rectangular, long opening and the edges are "serrated"--there's probably a term to describe the edges of the tip's opening, but I don't know it! lol Anyway, the clerk at Michaels said to use it the way Sol described it, and if it made me feel better, I could always put a rubber band around the outside of the bag where the tip is located. Then she reminded me that the mass of the frosting and the pressure/force of my pushing the icing out through the tip would keep the tip in place. I loved the physics lesson! I have not used it yet, but feel confident about it. Sooz

Kcc - Don't know whether or not you're in the minority here, but you are not alone! If you're concerned that the gray is drab and will make you feel claustrophobic, listen to your instincts. Just because gray is the chic color of the moment does not mean that it's right for you or your room. Gray is a very difficult color. It will make a room look like the interior of a submarine if the furnishings and other colors are not close to perfectly done. In addition, you have that large beautiful window. What kind of climate do you have? Gray days, rainy days? Imagine being in a home with dogs and a small child on a gray drizzly day with gray walls (and brown drapes) framing the view. I would paint all the walls, except for that nice red one in your dining room, a rich, deep cream - or, as others have suggested, a gold that would look good with your tan furniture. Those colors would keep the room bright and cheerful. Are you very attached to that rug? Could you put it somewhere else in your home? IMO it's the one element that's throwing everything else off. The colors and style don't coordinate with the rest of your furnishings and wall colors. Could you try going with bare floors for awhile? Then eventually get an oriental rug that contains all your colors - gold and tan and red and some blue/green. This would pull everything together and warm up the space. And it would also better hide what the doggies and baby might do to it!