How To Start Icing A Cake

It's really easy when you're about to start frosting a cake. The best thing is to get everything sorted out in front of you and what you're going to need. Have a turn table which makes it very nice for a frosting.

Put your cake on a cake board to be able to transport it and this actually keeps everything in one spot on the turn table. It's nice to have a good serrated knife, a pallet knife and an offset spatula specific for frosting. A spatula works.

The back of a spoon is quite nice. A regular old knife, if the need arises, will also work and in some instances, fork. Set out your cake layers and have a piece of parchment paper which has been treated with silicone.

At home, if you have any wax paper, that would work well as well, just something that has some sort of film on it that allows it to absorb oils and fats. Create four strips out of our parchment/silicone/wax paper. About an inch and a half in length, but just wide enough strips that are two finger lengths.

You can use a knife or use scissors or you can make a crease and use the side on the table. Arrange them around the edge of your cake board. Take your first layer.

You want your strips to be far enough under the cake that they're covering and protecting the plate that you're working on. Take your serrated knife and hold it evenly along the seam where your cake's doming and where your sides begin. This is the one place where the Lazy Susan or the rotating cake stand helps.

Now, take your frosting. Put a nice dollop of frosting right in your center and you're going to work that out to the edges. You do not want to go all the way out to the edge of your cake.

The reason why is because you don't want it splurging out the sides when you put the next layer on it. Press it down and slightly twist your next layer to really seal it on and repeat the same process again. Take your knife.

You can also do it as if you have a stiff layer and just go through in a non-rotating plate and just evenly cut all the way across the top of your cake creating a nice flat surface for the next layer to stick on. As you go on, the crumbs in this cake are your enemy, so you want to get rid of all of them. Also, make sure that your layers are even, that it's not sloshed off to one side and then repeat with the dollop of frosting in the center.

Taking your pallet knife, just think of this as an extension of your index finger. That's the best way to hold it and then you get control from the tip. Now, you could even be more generous and put heaping amounts of frosting.

Put on your last layer. Again, gently press and twist. Make sure all of your layers are perfectly even.

Clear away all your crumbs and then you're ready to start frosting the top of your cake. You have very consistent frosting in between your layers and you start frosting the exterior of the cake with a dollop of frosting in the center top of your cake. Cover the whole top of the cake holding your pallet knife again.

The one good trick of this is just never lift your knife on what you're working on and that's how you can make designs. Because this is the final layer, we're going to coat the whole sides. This is really a personal process, whatever feels best for you.

Most people tend to work from the bottom up and this way, if you work from the top down, you have the same amount of frosting on the top as you do around the base of your cake and it doesn't look like a mushroom. So, that is a completely covered cake. You can swirl and make designs.

The last step you're going to want to do is in a clockwise motion, find the tab that's over the other, not the one that's underneath because if it's under, when you pull, you're going to scrape off the frosting and catch it here. So, get the tab that starts out on top and then pull, turning your plate, pull it clockwise towards you and back under the cake to give you a perfectly clean line. People are going to figure out how you got your