How to Put Icing on a Cake
Hi, I’m a master cake decorator, and I’m here to share with you my technique for smoothing most cakes.
First of all, I’m going to take this iced cake and set in on my nice foil-covered board, so that it’s ready to work with. I do that by taking a small amount of icing and spreading on my board. That works like glue. Now, I’m going to take my spatula and slide it underneath the bottom edge of the cardboard to lift it on to my fingers and move it over to the board.
Let’s take that messy turntable out of our way. Now I’ve got my cake on a nice foil board.
As I said, this is a fairly nice smooth cake but I like it even nicer than that . This is my favorite technique. This is just an ordinary paper towel with a little design in it. I like it best with a very small design. When you look at paper towels, you notice that they’re textured in many ways.
Let me tell you first how to know when your icing is ready to use this technique. Your icing should be dry to the touch so when you touch it, nothing comes off on your fingers. If that was moist and fresh, and I touched it, I would have icing on each of my finger tips.
Now I’m going to take my towel and lay it off across the top of the cake and gently rub it. As I do this, my fingers are levelling out the surface and the cake will pick up the texture of the paper towel. I have another paper towel that I use that has a very smooth texture. Now you see that pretty little texture on the cake? I like that design for the background of my birthday cakes and any special or all-occasion cake.
Now we are going to continue around the sides, because. of course, I want the sides of the cake to look as nice as the top of the cake. So, continuing, I just gently am rubbing my hands up and down and back and forth. When I run out of paper towel, I pull it off and reposition it and continue.
I should pull a cameraman over here and have him do this part. This is easy. I get all my students to do this and they are amazed at how simple this technique is.
All right. Now I’ve come back full circle to where I started and this is where I just take a moment and check to see if I missed any spots. Well, right here, I’ve got a little bit of an empty space where it’s got a kind of wrinkle, so to speak, in the icing. I’ll just go back with my paper towel one more time over that area and smooth it again, and it needs a touch more.
This is what happens when you work with a chocolate cake on camera. Chocolate cake always tends to still leave a little touch of a crumb underneath the icing or in the middle of the icing. You see here, I’ve got a couple more dips and divots in the cake and I’m just going to smooth them out a little bit more with that paper towel.
Ta-da! Ain’t that nice?
That’s my preferred method for giving a nice smooth professional look to a cake.
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After my cake comes out of oven and it cools on wire rack, I start to the frosting process or icing. I ALWAYS get pieces of cake in the frosting! Why? I let it get cool as a cucumber, I even put it in the freezer this past time that I made my son’s Birthday Cake!! Please help because I REALLY love to make my own cakes.
Thanks
I would suggest keeping a glass of water close by and periodically, dip your spatula in the water. This works for me.
Kristy,
If you put a layer of crumb coating over your cake first before you freeze it, this will help. Crumb coating is taking the frosting you already have and slightly thinning out the consistency with either milk or light corn syrup, you pass a thin layer of frosting over the entire cake, you will notice that there are crumbs in the coating, when you freeze the cake the crumbs will be trapped in the crumb coating so when you actually frost to decorate your cake the crumbs will not be free to intefere with you final design.
hi, whenever i do fresh cream icing after a while, little cracks appear. any suggestions for that? i use whipping or double cream and i put icing sugar in it as well.
Why won’t my piping stick to the fondant on the sides of the cake?
Hi i am gonna try and make my little girl a birthday cake as she is 1 in a couple of weeks so i wont to make a number 1 can anyone tell me what is the best way to ice the cake and has anyone got any good recipes for butter iceing also would you put jam through the middle please advise
Jeanne, if your using buttercream to pipe on fondant, it won’t work. Royal icing should be used to pipe any designs on fondant. Hope this helps.
Hi, I am a beginner at cake decorating. How do I sprinkle chocolate rice or chocolate flakes at the sides of cakes already coated with cream? Can anyone advise me on this? Thank you.