The Icing on the Cake

Well...for me...now comes the hard part...the actual decorating. Once the icing is on the cake, you have 2 choices...

1) You can either leave it all dumpy and disgusting, or
2) You can try to get that smooth as glass look.

I do hope you said number two. If you did, let's examine our choices on how to accomplish this task. If you have the advantage of years of experience, you are probably rolling on the floor laughing right now. But if you are a newbie like me, you know how frustrating it can be to get your icing smooth. Here are a few of the options I have read about or tried personally:

With your cake on a turntable (believe me, if you are a newbie, you definitely want one of these) and your cake crumbcoated...heat a pan of water to boiling. Dip your spatula or bench scraper in the hot water and wipe dry.

Apply a nice thick layer of icing on your cake's top and sides. Remember you will actually be removing a lot of it. Starting at the outer edge of the cake "sweep" the icing toward the center and lift your spatula. Scrape your spatula clean and dip again if your spatula gets to where it won't glide smoothly over the icing. Turn your turntable a little and repeat.

When you have come full circle, dip your spatula in the hot water again and dry it off. Now hold your spatula level across the cake and turn your turntable to level the center.

Now for the sides of the cake...make sure to hold the spatula or bench scraper at a 90 degree angle with the turntable. This will help insure that you have nice straight sides. Working around the cake do a preliminary leveling, until the icing is pretty smooth. Then go around again checking for straight sides. Once this is done there are a couple of methods for smoothing you might want to try.

I must first give credit where credit is due, the ideas I am about to tell you about I learned from some wonderful ladies on a great website called cakecentral.com. If it wasn't for all their helpful advice, who knows where I would be. So I am just going to link you to a couple of these methods, so I don't get them messed up.

The first, is called the Melvira Method, and you can find her instructions

here

The second, is called the Viva paper towel method (sorry, I don't know the original poster), and you can find it

here

And the third, and you probably won't believe this until you see it

here

I hope you find these icing tips helpful. I have tried a couple, but I still struggle with buttercream somewhat. I guess that is why I do so many fondant cakes.

But that is another post!