Nougatine Basket with Marzipan Fruit

We made nougatine baskets to hold our marzipan fruit. It's not the easiest thing to work with, but it looks pretty cool. Basically, nougatine is caramel with toasted sliced almonds in it. It's moldable when it's hot but hardens very brittle. The problem is, it doesn't stay hot enough to work with for very long. We used royal icing to decorate the baskets. I think the icing was too thick and dry and very difficult to work with. But that could be me; I'm not great at using royal icing. Regardless of my difficulties with the nougatine and royal icing, one it was filled with my marzipan fruit, it looked pretty darn good!