How To Frost Every Cake | Method Mastery | Epicurious

Hi, I'm Bill and I've been a professional baker for over 10 years. I'm going to show you how to

frost

each

cake

. Everyone has a different way of icing

cake

s. I have some very specific and simple ones that I like. Use it, that's what we're going to do today, cakes have to look delicious first and foremost and that's why I lean towards this kind of buttercream style and classic textures and there are amazing things you can do with sugar, fondant and sculpture, but for me. I love making a cake that looks simply delicious. Here are the tools we use when decorating a cake with icing.

The first and most important thing you will need is a turntable. Next is the cardboard circle that you are going to put the cake on. with a little bit of tape to stick it to your turntable I make most of my buttercreams with a paddle, you can make them super nice and airy and also push out a little bit of air and make them nice and smooth. I have two offset spatulas, a small one for more detailed work and then this offset size, which is kind of the workhorse of the whole operation, a knife for leveling the cake, two sizes of spatulas, one small and one large, a bench scraper and finally piping bags and pastry tips, this is what we will do.

Use it to decorate the cake after we are done and assembled, let's get started. This is cream cheese

frost

ing, so to frost the cake you must make frosting. There are three different types of frosting that I typically use. I am going to start. with cream cheese frosting so this is room temperature cream cheese it's really important that it's room temperature and you want it to be nice and light so we're going to start with that first we're going to start adding room temperature butter it's important that your cream cheese and your butter are the same temperature, you're not trying to add a cold one to a warm one or vice versa and the butter will be added in small amounts, about a tablespoon at a time, leaving it more or less The last thing you want are chunks of butter in your cream cheese buttercream.

Patience is key. It takes a long time to make cream cheese buttercream. Well, you want it to be super homogeneous, ready to mix with the cocoa and sugar. Okay, this looks great. As you can see, now it's super light, super fluffy and I'm going to mix in my cocoa very slowly first so you don't do that. Here we go. I'm going to add the sugar in about three batches just so I don't make a big mess, it looks like a lot of sugar, it won't seem like a lot of sugar when it's fully incorporated, although like I said, it's a lot of sugar, the final addition of the sugar and I'm going to go ahead and add two teaspoons of salt too, that's the other key to a grape buttercream, there's a lot of salt, we want this to work to start dissolving the sugar, you don't want to get the chalky taste of the icing sugar in your buttercream, you want it so it's super incorporated and really smooth and creamy and that's cream cheese frosting, this is American buttercream.

American buttercream is super simple, it's butter and sugar, the trick is to cream the butter and sugar long enough to make it super fluffy, you want to get this. totally smooth, really nice and light, before you go ahead and add the sugar, we're halfway there, make sure all the butter is nice and light and beat, it's starting to look nice, silky and clear, completely changed color . I'm going to add the sugar in a few batches so as not to mess up my American buttercream too much. I use a pretty standard ratio of three parts butter to four parts sugar.

It will almost look like a dough when you start putting it together. It's going to get super light, I promise, now that it's totally together, it's made this super thick paste, we're going to start lifting it up to add some air to it, this is the time you can go ahead and add your salt, you can just watch it. change, you want it to become kind of like a cloud, like a really fluffy buttercream, easy to work with buttercream, it will also feel like it's beating for a long time, okay, we're getting there, so you can take this and feel it. in your fingers I still feel a little bit of sugar, we'll keep it for a little bit longer, but not much, so this is a classic American buttercream base, here we could add vanilla, we could add alcohol.

I can add any kind of things to flavor it today I'm going to add some freeze dried strawberry powder and that's American buttercream. This is Swiss meringue buttercream. The difference between Swiss meringue and cream cheese or American buttercream is that the base for this is cooked. egg whites and sugar in a meringue with the fat of the beaten butter. The nice thing about this is that it's super stable, it's also nice and shiny and can go very smooth on a cake, so it's a little more elegant to start with. this I'm going to use some double boiler egg whites I'm going to use the bowl straight from the mixer pot with boiling water I'm going to add my egg whites granulated sugar and I'm just going to mix that you want to take this at about 140 degrees you don't even need a thermometer for this, you can do it by feeling and touching.

I can still taste a little bit of sugar, so I'm going to take it a little bit more, but you can see. how it's getting a little foamy and fluffy, it looks great. I'm going to throw this straight into the blender. This time we will use the whisk attachment, not the paddle. The slower and more gradual you take it until it becomes a stiff meringue, the more structure it will have because the bubbles, air bubbles and air pockets will be a little smaller and you will gradually form them, so it will become super shiny and fluffy. .

It's going to take a minute to get to a really stiff peak and you also want to be able to feel the bottom of the bowl and this is still very hot. You want it to be totally at room temperature, not at all warm before you start adding this room temperature butter again. I'll stay here and watch it mix for a long time. It's not quite stiff yet, but it's coming in nicely, it's stiff, it's shiny, it's beautiful, it's totally room temperature and I'm going to start adding the butter piece by piece. you can see it's starting to get stiff and cloudy like it's essentially the color of butter, add a little vanilla extract to make a super classic vanilla buttercream and again salt, of course salt smells great, just scrape it off and make sure it's all together. incorporated is so shiny and so beautiful and that's Swiss meringue buttercream, these are petals.

An exciting and beautiful way to finish your cake is what we call petal finishing and it is done with a combination of a piping bag and an offset spatula. It takes a little time, but it's incredibly simple, so for this finish, you'll start by laying pipes. I have a large round tip and I'm going to draw a line straight up on the cake of equal sizes and then you take your offset spatula and you just drag your spatula halfway up. from the point by scraping the spatula between each one, so it takes a little time and then the next row goes right where you scraped, try to keep them as close to the same size as possible across the cake.

Calling this petals or fish scales looks much more impressive than difficult, this can be fun by alternating tonal colors, so the last row is the trickiest, you just have to hide it and hide it, it will never be perfect. and those are petals, this is a horizontal texture with a spiral on top. I'm just going to take a little bit of American buttercream and this cake is covered in crumbs, so I'm going to paste a little bit here just to give me a little bit more. working with this buttercream has a beautiful texture, so since we're going to do a texture on the side of this, it doesn't have to be the cleanest, so I'm just going to use the tip of this offset and I'm going to put it right on the side of the cake and I'll quickly go up the side of the cake dragging my tip and then you'll finish the top as usual, nice and flat and even, and then you can do exactly the same thing, but just on the top, so make a full spiral on the top of the cake and that's a horizontal texture with a spiral on the top, this is vertical and continue with textured buttercreams again, American buttercream.

The super easy classic form is a quick vertical. I'm just going to make sure my spatula is nice and clean and I'm just going to run my spatula up the side of the cake. Now it doesn't matter if you get this little lip. on the top we're going to clean it all up at the end, you just go around and you can probably do two or three passes before you have to clean your spatula. Buttercream is so flexible that you can make it multiple times. I mean, if you didn't like the way it turned out, smooth it again, maybe add a little bit more layer there and then do it again, it can be reworked and reworked and with this I like to juxtapose With this nice smooth top, I think this texture really leans towards simplicity, like I said rustic, simple, easy and that's vertical.

This is a diagonal texture. Now we're just going to make a diagonal and I think that's the easiest way to do it. This is to start at the bottom and go diagonally towards you as you rotate the table so we can go like this. The key to this is to try to keep them all at a similar angle again, without being too worried about the top. because we're going to clean that up at the end anyway and I think if they're multi-width and the overlay looks great with this, the key is to just bring it all the way to the top of the cake. instead of stopping it midway if you don't get it all the way to the top on the first lap, you just go back and hit it again, super simple, and there we go, and that's the diagonal texture, this is swooshes and spikes.

So this is a cake covered in crumbs. I'm going to put a little more buttercream on it starting from the top. This cake is cold out of the refrigerator, which is a great way to start a cake, so after you've covered it with crumbs. Pop it in the refrigerator or even the freezer if you have the space. You don't want it to be incredibly thick because there is already a good layer of buttercream on this cake, but you do want enough smooth buttercream to incorporate the texture back into it. we're going to make sure we build it above the top tier of the cake, giving us a little crown to work with.

I'm going to start shoveling with the end of my spatula, you don't want me to do that. it's going to be kind of a normal up and down and up and down texture, just kind of a random up and down palette with a texture that moves all over the cake. You don't want to just use the tip because you'll end up with these lines that we'll use later, but if you use a little bit further back on the spatula, you can get these nice wide, wide palette marks and that's what we're going to look for right there, it should look unintentional but intentionally unintentional and I'm going to just Finish off the top like we did with the base layer by dragging it around so it's nice and smooth and then I'm just going to work on these edges.

I'll remove excess buttercream from my spatula

every

time I use it so you're not accidentally dragging any more where you didn't want to, it just gives you a little more control if you don't have a ton of buttercream on your spatula, so give Step back and make sure it stays level as it looks. Look up and down and see where you need to work a little bit more and then you just have to find a point where you decide it's good, this is the classic birthday cake for me, it's this kind of sharp drop. texture, if you don't have an offset spatula you can use the back of a large spoon and it's the same thing, you can put it on and take it off, but the back of the spoon will also give you enough control to do this. rustic texture and that's swooshes and spikes, this is waves, another super simple texture is kind of a wavy horizontal pattern, similarly, we're going to put this on and take it off to have a nice base layer on top of our crumb coat.

I've got it nice and smooth, so now we're going to go ahead and score the cake and I'm going to make little short strokes all over the side of the cake and if you get too much buttercream, make sure you scrape it off, but you shouldn't remove too much. buttercream with this. We're going to alternate this, so I'll make sure the next one is in the middle again. A super rustic and very simple way to decorate. a cake requires no tips or piping bags, I just go around the cake and it's waves, this is zigzag, super easy, it can be done in one continuous motion, it's an easy, rustic, fun and quick way to finish a cake, any of these horizontal textures covers any number of sins, so if you have your cake a little bit messy, these are some great ways to fix it, so I'm just going to use just the tip of my offset spatula and I'm going to do this

every

way over and over. again up to the top another easy and beautiful way to finish a cake is to simply scrape in some chocolate this is just adark chocolate bar a vegetable peeler and you I can just give it some chocolate shavings right on top.

I love making chocolate shavings or chocolate chips into a chocolate cake. I think chocolate on chocolate always looks good. Here we go, another easy rustic cake finish, which is zigzag. This is a smooth finish. now we are going to make a smooth sided cake, we will use swiss meringue buttercream. I'm going to do a rough layer again and then smooth it out using a bench scraper with Swiss meringue to get a really smooth finish. I'm kind of working this with my spatula to push out some of the air bubbles so that when we finish the layer we don't you trap all these big air bubbles and affect your nice smooth finish, so I'm going to actually apply it. thick and then remove it because we're really going to try to make it as smooth as possible.

Swiss meringue is very pleasant to work with. It's very easy to build a nice border on top to have so much capacity. To cut that really beautiful corner, we're going to try to make this as sharp and clean as possible, so I'm going to soften as much as I can with my offset, that's a total personal preference that I'm going to write down. of filling where I have these little holes in the side, so now that I've got it pretty smooth, I'm going to finish it off and try to get it as super crispy as I can with this bench scraper, so I'm going to hold this bench scraper exactly up. up and down, holding it not too close to one side nor too perpendicular to it.

I'm going to go at about a 45 degree angle and try to make it as big as possible. and as long a stroke as possible with my turntable, you don't want to keep making these short ones because you're going to get these jumps and jumps in the buttercream, you want to be able to make a big long swoosh and that's why we really wanted to put it thick so you have this type of room to remove as much buttercream as you can so it's super smooth while still having a good layer on the outside and not getting too thin.

It looks pretty smooth and you can go back in with a super clean spatula to give it a few touch ups here and there. I'm just going to make sure that my spatula really has nothing on it so I can get the cleanest edge possible and I can smooth out some of these little imperfections, so now that we have the sides nice and smooth, I'm going to do the same thing with the top. I'm going to enter from the side. and we cut through that buttercream, giving us a nice crispy edge there, so you're going to give it a pass to roughen it up and get that part off and then you can go back in if you want. trying to be super super sharp with a little offset and really get that edge and smooth out the top, make sure you clean the spatula between each pass, look how I have this little kind of indentation on the top, easy, just put a little bit. extra in there and then smooth it out on the best thing about a soft cake is that now you have a totally blank palette that you can do anything with, you can decorate it, you can pipe it, you can do whatever and I really love adding sprinkles. and I like sprinkles on the side of a cake and a good trick to do that is to place the cake stand right on a tray to catch the sprinkles while you're doing this and I've got some sprinkles right here I'm going to take them in my hand in a bunch decently and slowly I'm going to place them on the sides of the cake.

You could make the whole cake. You can make part of a cake. I think we're going to get halfway, aren't we? It doesn't have to be perfect, you're even just giving it that fun party vibe. I love the sparkles and the smooth finish. This is a cake cone. Another great way to add a little texture to the sides of a cake. Very easy is a cake comb. So here we have a smooth sided cake, we put it a little thicker than you normally would because you're going to go deeper into it with this textured comb similar to using a bench scraper, but this will add a little bit of texture.

On the other hand, it's incredibly easy and can make your cakes look so fun. It's kind of a simple scallop, but they come in all kinds of different profiles, so there are a lot of fun ways to do this again that you're not trying to take. Scoop out a ton of buttercream, so don't leave it perfectly perpendicular to the side of your cake, but at a slight angle, and you're going to dig into the cake being careful not to press it all the way down to touch it. For the cake itself you just want to texture the outside of the buttercream, but you do want the entire profile of the comb to be in the buttercream and then slowly you're going to drag it again trying to make long strokes with the turntable to there's no stopping and pulling and that will start to give texture to the sides of the buttercream and what you can do is just wipe this off and then give it another hit again, one of those really simple ways to make your cakes look super professional and finished without actually having to do some difficult technical things and that's a cake comb, this is the way to finish a cake after we've put on the base layer, it's piping and there's an infinite amount of piping tips. , pipe shapes and pipe techniques.

I'm going to do just a few simple ways to use a piping bag and piping tips to make cakes look beautiful. There are a lot of different types of piping bags. I like to use these, uh, disposables. This is an 18 inch bag I have. of a standard round tip, this is an 807, so it's this big, it's kind of a multi-purpose workhorse of a tip, so I'm going to cut a portion of the plastic off, probably at the same time as I open the bag and drop it tilt it and then just work all the way to the bottom like this there's a couple of ways you can fill a bag.

I usually just do it in my hand, you want to have your hand in a C shape holding the bag open, keep it nice and open. and as clean as possible, you want to start filling the piping bag closer to the tip, you don't want to have too much of a bag that you're trying to pack the frosting in just to keep it tidy and then just a rubber band. spatula, a big one that I like to use and then this is just American buttercream and I take a tablespoon of buttercream and I press it carefully into the bag like this and then I'm going to repeat that until the bag is full, so a once you've filled it out everything you're going to do and then give it a couple of spins and that's it, we're ready to start channeling this is writing on a cake, we can't talk about decorating a cake without talking about writing on a cake.

It is something that can be quite complicated but it doesn't have to be. You can make capital letters. You can make a script. Today I'm using a little bit broader tip, just to make it a little bit more bold and graphic, but it can be used anywhere from a tiny little dot to you know this one is on the bigger side. It is always useful to practice. A lot of times I'll trace the diameter of the cake on a piece of parchment paper with a marker and then, you know, practice a couple of times so I don't waste buttercream.

You can always scrape it off the parchment paper and throw it back into your bowl if you mess it up on the top of the cake I made. that a million times you just scrape it off, clean the cake a little and try again. It's really not the end of the world, so I'll make a quick and simple happy birthday. If that happens, sometimes it's very easy. It's easier if your cake is cold to slide your little scroll, just drag it back into place and in the end you won't even see it and then continue if you want to use it.

Press as evenly as you can, as slowly as you want, think about the angle of the letters, you want everything to be in a straight line and nice and neat, and if it breaks, if there's a bubble in your piping bag. okay, just fill it in with a little dot on your eye on the other side of the shirt, tuck it in and voila, this is a round toe top edge that keeps with the simplicity theme here. One of my favorite ways to finish a cake is with our round tip. again and it's just a simple dot border, I think it goes really well with this vertical texture on the outside of this buttercream, so I'm just going to give it a little dot and lift the key, the key is to lift while you're still applying. light pressure and also trying to keep each dot the same size, which can be a little tricky and if you don't keep it the same size, that's okay, it can take a little time.

My cake decorating style tends to lean towards grandma, so this definitely fits. with that and that is a round tip dot border, this is a star tip shell border, one of the most classic finishing techniques is a shell border, you know the classic cake from your grocery store, your local bakery and it's super simple, I have that smaller star tip on and I'm going to make a simple shell border so you just give it a little dot and drag a dot and drag it all around trying to keep it as uniform as possible, even in how close it is to the edge. of the cake and the size of the shell itself, I really feel like you can make any combination you want.

I don't think I've made this combination before but it looks good together or is it whatever you want to do and that's a star tip shell border this is a round tip cupcake another vital skill is how to frost a cupcake and there are so many ways to frost a cupcake this is kind of a classic way to frost a cupcake simple clean up i'm going to use a round tip and a little offset so to do this just take your cupcake take your big round tip right in the center and place a tablespoon big right there, take your little offset, push it towards the center and turn it over and over again just a big slice and then a swoosh with the spatula, nice, clean and neat classic cupcake, and that's a round tipped cupcake, this is a large star cupcake another great classic way to frost a cupcake is a large star tip this is a technique i have used in most of the bakeries i have worked at they are super simple very classic you just take your big star right in the center and then you go around it and finish it off by dragging the tail a little bit, something clean and simple, and it's the right amount of frosting for a cupcake and that's a big star cupcake this is a small star cupcake one easy, quick and fun technique to use it's just small portions the teeth of this star are smaller you can just make small random portions some people try it and make this look like little cacti.

I try not to pile too much buttercream on a cupcake. I think you really need the right ratio of cake to buttercream and that's a small star cupcake. This is a petal tip and a ribbon tip. Two other classic tips that I have I have an open petal tip and a ribbon tip here that has some teeth. It will be interesting to have them next to each other. We have a ton of different things you can do with these, but it's one of my favorite things to do. The tip of this petal is a little wider on one side and pointed at the top, a sort of teardrop shape.

When I'm going to do this kind of ruffle or ribbon technique, put the thickest part on the bottom, you can do. this horizontally on the side of a cake, you can do this on the top of a cake, it's a versatile thing, this is also the same tip you would use to make buttercream flowers, so I'll show you a little ruffle technique for begin. It just goes like this, nice even texture, even pressure, and this can be, you can make it tighter, wider, very useful, similarly, with this tape tip, you can do exactly the same technique, only I have a totally different look, so this is I'm going to do the same thing, but it has teeth and you can make it as tight as you want.

You can space it out to make a larger zigzag. You can also leave it flat. You can get a smooth or nice pull. You can do a similar technique to the shell, there are many different options with these. Another great technique with this little ribbon is that you can do a basket weave texture, so alternating between them, you'll just do every other basket, then across, and then just a little bit of a woven texture. There are an endless amount of tips that you can use in any number of techniques, these are just some classic, simple and easy ones, and that's a petal tip and a ribbon tip, and that's how you frost every cake, of course, this one It is not all possible ways.

I ice a cake, but this is a great kind of set of basic, classic, useful techniques that I think are fun and easy, and a great skill base to have. Hopefully these are encouraging and, uh, not intimidating, and you should at least be able to try them. at home you can always start over you can always improve you can always correct your mistakes there really are no rules it should be simple and fun