I made a cake using a 9x3 pan this weekend. The decor was 5 roses in a rose spray, bottom and top shell borders and leaves for the floral spray and a little bow - same cake in course 1 book. For icing the cake I used the icer tip. I made 2 lbs of icing for this cake and only had approx 1 tablespoon of icing left over. I even squeezed the icing tip to allow for thin coating. Don't you think this is too much icing for one cake? The rose were Wilton rose with 7 petals. The book didn't say how much icing it would take. Is this normal.

I used the wilton all shortening recipe.

...well, maybe, maybe not! According to Wilton, it takes about 4-1/2 cups of icing for a 9" round. A 1# batch of icing is about 3 cups, so double that and you get 6 cups of icing IMHO you can never have too much icing on a cake!!

That sounds like good advice from MrsMissy. I usually use at least a double batch between filling, crumbcoating and icing that size cake. But I like a reasonable amount of icing on my cakes, too. So it sounds okay to me.
Tanya