The Perfectly Frosted Cake
For beginner cake decorators, one of the hardest things to overcome is uneven icing. It takes some practice to attain a nice smooth finish to the buttercream on the cake.
Chill the cake before you start frosting. A warm cake is more apt to break apart. Chill before and after filling it. Often, if you frost the cake right after you fill it, later on the filling will bulge out of the middle of the cake. By chilling first, the cake has time to settle and anything that wants to squeeze out of the sides can be smoothed with the spatula.
When working with any round cake, a lazy susan can make the job much easier. This tool allows you to turn the cake while you are frosting the sides so there are fewer start and stop marks on the cake. You may want to crumb coat your cake before getting started. Use either a very thin consistency buttercream to glaze the whole cake or brush it with thinned apricot jam. Thin the jam with hot water and strain it before applying it with a pastry brush. (You should also chill the cake after this step).
A quick way to get the icing on the cake is to use a large cake decorating tip to pipe it all over the cake before spreading it. The #789 Wilton cake decorating tip works great for this. It's such a big tip that you'll need to devote a cake decorating bag to it because the hole is much too big to hold a coupler. Once you cut the hole, just drop the tip right into the bag. If you're not using this tip then carefully place the icing on the side of the cake and push from the middle of the icing outward. You don't want to drag the spatula across the cake. That pulls crumbs into the icing and can tear the cake. Medium consistency buttercream works best. If it's too thin, it will slide off the cake. Too thick and it will tear the cake and be very difficult to spread.
Start piping the icing on the cake, starting from the base. Hold the tip against the cake so the lines are facing inward. Pipe all around the bottom and then start another line of icing all around the cake right above the last one. Continue all the way up the cake, going a little past the top of the cake. This extra overlap of icing at the top will help to make a cleaner edge on the cake. Now use either a metal spatula, a bowl scraper or a spackle knife held vertically against the side of the cake at a 45 degree angle to smooth the sides. Scrape off excess icing as you go. Continue going over the sides until they're pretty even.
Next, pipe icing on top of the cake. Using your spatula again, pull the icing from the edge of the cake towards the center. Each time you do this, wipe off the excess icing. After you've done this all around the edge, take the spatula and go straight across the top. Do this to the entire top of the cake. Any excess icing on the edge can be lifted off.
Not every type of buttercream crusts. If you do use crusting buttercream, you can do the next step to get the icing really smooth. Let the cake sit for at least 15 minutes. Touch the icing and see if it's hardened. If it comes off on your finger, wait a little longer. Now, take either a Viva paper towel (patterned paper towels won't work for this), wax paper or parchment paper and lay it on the side of the cake. Use the spatula again to smooth across the paper towel a few times. Move the paper towel to the next spot and repeat. Do this to the entire cake. The wax paper and parchment paper don't bend as easily but they will still work.
Theresa Happe is a baker, cake decorator and co-creator of CakesWeBake.com, a social network for cake decorating where you will find thousands of cake ideas , cake photos, cake decorating videos, a live chat and forum.