How To Make Your Own Buttercream Wedding Cake | Part 1 | Global Sugar Art

Hi, I'm Chef Alan Tatro from Global Sugar Art and in this episode I'm going to show you how to

make

a

buttercream

wedding

cake

. We will start with the already baked

cake

s. I will show you how. to cut them, fill them, ice them, how to put rods in the cake to support the frame and how to build a tiered cake and you can use this for any size or shape of cake you want so I'm going to get started. I have two. 10 inch cakes already baked and we have charts on our website at

global

sugar

com on how many cups of dough are needed to

make

each size cake.

In general, a good rule of thumb for the average type of cake is between 1/2 and 2./3 batter, so if you're not sure exactly how much batter you need for

your

pan, all you have to do is pour in water. in the pan and up to a little more than half of the way, maybe two-thirds at most. and then pour in the water and measure it and that will tell you how many cups of batter you need for that

part

icular cake pan. It's not difficult to know. We sell cake mixes and a regular Allen Tate will select Deluxe cake mix brands. about 4 cups of batter so you can figure out how many cake mixes you need too so to start after I baked my cake and I even inverted it and let it cool on a rack I put them back in the pan and do this because these are pans 2 inches and I want my final cake on these lower tiers.

I want these first two tiers to be 4 inches tall, so cutting them flat will give me 2 layers that will make one tier. 4 inches tall for the top two tiers of this cake. I wanted them 5 inches tall so I would have baked 3 cakes, I cut the top off and on one of them I would have cut the cake in half and added that extra 1/2 layer to give it another layer of cake, I used a knife nice long saw blade or like a slicing knife and just go along the top of the mold and I like to rotate the mold instead of cutting it straight, if you cut straight you can sometimes shake it a little or It's not always as even as you want and then once you cut it all the way through, you can remove the extra cake and I'm going to do the same thing with this one.

Letting the knife rest just above the top of the pan, there we go and see. I have a baking sheet here. I'm just going to put this extra cake in the pan. Okay, the next step is to put the cake on some type of a board between each cake is a cardboard circle or I really like to use these foam boards. These are quarter inch foam boards that are much sturdier, have a plastic top, so they are grease proof and really work. great on a tiered cake, so you can use cardboard or foam. My choice is usually the foam piece.

You'll notice that I have a set of foam dolls set up back here that are exactly the same size as this

wedding

cake. Hmmm, I will be using the foam dolls a lot and throughout the process of this wedding cake to show you exactly how things are done and if you are a beginner at cake decorating you will have a set of foam dolls to practice before making them. the wedding cake is very very very useful and you'll see why as we go hmm so I have a 10 inch cake and a 10 inch circle and I'm going to put it on top of the cake and invert it.

Put it on my turntable now. The reason I put it in a 10 inch circle is when I stack these cakes. I don't want the cake circle to stick out. I want it to be flush with the frosting running down the sides of the cake. Now, one of the things that I forgot to do and that I usually do before I put the cardboard circle on, I'm going to take a little bit of

buttercream

and this will help stick that circle to the cake so it doesn't slide off. an important

part

that you should really do, okay?

Now I'm ready to frost this cake. If I do it now, I'll have frosting on the side of my turntable, so I'm going to put it all on. a little bit larger circle of cake and that will give me room to work, so I'm going to center it there and the first thing I'm going to do is put on a very, very light layer of buttercream, there are many different ways I can fill a nice cake, this is just one way, although I am going to use a lemon filling in this cake, I still like to put a thin layer of buttercream and what it does is seal the cake so that the filling is nice.

It is not absorbed by the cake and when you cut the cake a day or two later you still have a good layer of filling. Any fruit filling is water based and the cake will gradually absorb it and it sort of disappears into the cake. You get it, you notice that you have less and less padding as the days go by, so that's the start. Now I'm going to grab some fondant. This is a buttercream wedding cake, but this is one place where I will use some fondant. The problem with buttercream wedding cakes is that after you ice them about eight or ten hours later, sometimes the next day you start to see a little lump right in the center of the cake and anyone who has made wedding cakes with buttercream frosting will tell you this happens all the time, part of it is that the cake sits overnight and the air that is trapped in all the layers of the cake slowly comes out and pushes the buttercream out, so We have a little solution for this and I'll give you a It's also an alternative to this, so I'm just going to roll this fondant into a little rope and place it around the outside edge.

It doesn't need to be very thick, this will just prevent the filling from getting squashed and the buttercream sticking out, so I just want it to be inside the cake now, if you want a real buttercream wedding cake and don't want to deal with the fun you can have. of

your

buttercream frosting in a small bowl and keep adding a little powdered

sugar

until it becomes so stiff that you can put it on the board and roll it and it will reach that consistency, so you could use the buttercream and just Thicken it heavily with powdered sugar and then roll it out the same way I did with the fondant, but now you can buy fondant in a small 8 ounce package to make it quick and easy.

I have a delicious lemon pie filling. This is one of Alan Tatro's brands and is all ready to go. It doesn't need refrigeration, so it's perfectly safe to make your wedding cake and leave it there. We have a great variety. We have raspberry, strawberry, blueberry and lemon. frosting fillings like a German chocolate frosting, cream cheese frosting and we also have a chart on our website. I bought these fillers that tell you how much filler you need for each size level, so now I'm ready to put on the second layer. This is probably one of the handiest little tools I have they are made by phat daddy-o's.

This is a cake lifter when you're working with an even larger cake like this, like if I was frosting my 14 or 16 inch cake, use a pizza peel if you have it. We got an aluminum pizza peel, not a wooden one, but they're usually about 14 or 16 inches in diameter or square and they're great for lifting a large pie, so I'll put them right under it, flip the pie over, and then just place it right on top and center it and now I'm ready to frost this cake um the first thing I'm going to do is frost the top of the cake.

I used some Allen Tatro buttercream and this is flavored with our bridal mix mmm and when you buy the buttercream or if you want to make your own the recipe is on our website make sure you put it in the mixer before use it if you made it ahead of time or If you buy the frosting and beat it on very low speed for about five or six minutes at least, it will be super creamy, smooth and easy to work with, so I make the top first and then use what they They call it a Wilton Rapid Ice Tube.

I think it's a 789 tube and I put it in a number: an 18 inch piping bag or you can also use a disposable bag, basically, but what I'm going to do is pipe it. the frosting on the side of this cake. I'm going to start from the bottom and just go around the cake. You can see how quick and easy it is and the best part is that you don't get crumbs, you are covering the cake, all in one motion and the top, don't be afraid to put too much buttercream on your cake the first time, it's much easier to remove a little bit than to try to smooth the sides of the cake and dig into the cake and get crumbs out and then you have to keep adding layer and layer of buttercream on top to try to correct the mistake, so always start with more buttercream than you need.

I'm just going to put the top on first and then I'm going to use a bowl of hot water that I just microwaved, let me grab it, so this is just warm water and I'm using a T Co axe. This is a dough cutter. or a side scraper. I like it because it lays flat this way and when I put it on the side of the cake I can lay it flat on this larger cake board, that's one of the reasons I wanted a larger cake board and I can smooth out the sides, so I'm just going to wet it in the warm water, you don't have to dry it and I'm going to do it in a couple of movements, I'm not going to do it all at once because I'm removing a lot of frosting okay.

I don't have to clean up the buttercream. I really just want this to get a little moist and look pretty good. We'll smooth it out using a paper towel or the paper method, so that's all I have to put aside. but now I want to get to the top, so I'm going to do the same. I'm just going to dip it in the water, go in from the outside edge to the center, never go from the center out when looking at the wedding cake. it only shows about an inch and a half on each one on the edge so you don't have to worry about the center, it's just the outside edge if I have a lot of cake to make or if I'm going to put frosting. several cakes at once.

I usually use a saucepan of hot water that I can put back on the stove for a minute or two, or if you have a microwave right next to it, you can just put the bowl back in a hole. reheat it and that's all I'm going to do at this point, the frosting is straight, it's pretty smooth. You could almost decorate it as is, but I'm going to let it dry now, just remove a little extra frosting. I let this dry, especially since I dipped my spatula in water. I can see a little bit of water in the frosting, so I'm going to give it about five or ten minutes to dry and then we'll come back and use the paper towel and the computer paper, regular copy paper to show you the two different things that you can use to get a super smooth finish on the buttercream and then we'll continue stacking the cake, we'll come back.

This glaze is now placed and dries for about 10 minutes. This will all depend on the humidity in your environment and your kitchen where I live is quite dry so it's not a problem if you can touch the side and it doesn't stick to your finger you know it's ready so there are two things to do. you can use to soften this even further. At this point, you can use Vive brand paper towels or any brand you have in your area or country that doesn't. They have a pattern, if they have a quilted pattern you will have a quilted cake, so if you want to find a paper towel without that pattern, if you can't find it, good old computer copy paper works just as well, so I start. with the top I just place this on top and I'm using a fondant softener.

If you don't have a fondant softener, you can use your hand and I'll show you and I'm just going to press lightly and I'm working from the outside, remember, like icing the cake. I don't want to push that frosting over the edge and you can see it start to smooth out if you don't have one of those, just use your hand, just push down. A little bit, try not to leave finger marks, you don't want to press too hard, you can see all the little areas. I'm not going to worry too much about the top because most of it won't be visible, so now when you get there. aside just to show you that you can use any of the products.

I'm going to put a piece of computer paper here and use the fondant softener and just go up and down slightly back and forth and then we'll pull. That from afar and you can see how it starts to smooth the cake, it wasn't very difficult to start with but if you are a beginner and don't have much experience icing a cake you will find that this will really hide. You made a lot of mistakes when you frosted the cake. This really doesn't require much. This is a good place. This is where I took the cake scraper out, so let's see what it does to that area.

You can get it? a good shot of that, okay and then we'll see how smooth we can make it, you can see it disappears quite a bit, you'll see a little bit of the seam, but the unevenness is now gone, that looks pretty good and that's really all I want do, just to show you again that you can use either one, whether it's the paper towel or the paper, and it doesn't stick to the buttercream and you don't have to use this for a wedding cake. You can use this. for a birthday cake or any cake you are making, if you want areally nice buttercream finish that's a great way to do it so now we do all the cakes the same way we leave them all smooth and of course they've dried a little bit and then we're going to go ahead and we're going to stack the cake.

We'll be right back and show you how to put it all together. All cakes are iced. They have all been soft. You will notice that some are softer. Like others, I deliberately didn't smooth my bottom tier because I'm going to place a decoration around the tier, so no matter how smooth the bottom is, it will be covered. I'm sure the top edge here was smooth, but that's all I know. I really cared, so I'm going to take one of my fictional parts. This is a circle of cake that is the same size as this third tier.

I'm going to place it. right on top of the buttercream frosting. I just showed you how to smooth out the frosting using a paper towel or a piece of computer paper and this is a crusted buttercream so it's dry enough that you can put something on it and it won't stick. and that's one of the beauties of working with a crisp buttercream, so I'm going to make this tier the same size as the next tier and I'm going to center it there and then I'm going to use a little tracing tool or toothpick and just go around the outer edge and place a small mark there;

You probably won't see this on camera, but it's enough to know exactly where my next level should be placed. Now I have five places I want to put a rod. I need to create an internal support so that this cake doesn't tip over and so that if I need to travel with it or take it to a reception room it won't fall on me, so inside this circle I'm going to put five Polly dowels and these are plastic rods for wrists that are reinforced and I know I'm going to put them in these five places. I just pick four and then one in the middle and what you do.

It's either place the rod against the side of the cake and use a pen and mark where the top of the cake is or you can just measure and determine exactly how tall you need it to be and then use a pair of heavy kitchen shears. or better yet a pair of pruning shears that you would use like small trees or brushes work even better and then you just cut and measure your $5 odds and then it's very easy to just push that rod right into the cake and you want them to go right under of the buttercream level.

I don't want them to stick together at all and I know I have a fifth, so now we've supported the second level with these five. tacos and if you remember when I iced the cake under this larger plate, there's a plate the same size as this cake, so it's going to sit flat here. I'm going to use this big spatula again and do it right. under that cake, I'm going to lift it up and line it up right where I left my marks and then I'm going to take it out and you can slightly move the cake a little bit if you need to readjust it. now all the weight of this cake is on the board, I just show you here, all the weight of this cake is on this board and that board is on the supports that I put on the cake, so there is no weight on it. lower level, everything is transferred to the rods and goes directly to the lower board.

Now I'm going to repeat exactly the same thing. Then I would take the next size of cake. Put it on top. Write everything around you. Put it in four. the cake this size probably for no more than five dollars and then place my next tier and then repeat that before placing the top tier and that way all the weight from the top of the cake goes through each set of pillars onto the board from the bottom through the pillars across the board and then to the base and then you have a perfectly straight cake that won't lean back and forth no matter how hot it is outside or if you want to transport it, it will be nice and solid, it's Okay, so I stacked my cake.

I have rods on the bottom tier, tier, and 3rd tier, and they all hold up from top to bottom. One of the popular things you're seeing some decorators doing now is taking a very long rod like a quarter inch rod and going down the center of the cake and basically hitting it through the boards all the way to the bottom. I feel like that is completely unnecessary in my opinion. I don't think it's any use. for the cake, if you have it completely supported with rods, this cake will not lean in any direction, it will stay as sturdy and straight as possible and I have made six seven and eight tier wedding cakes like this and they have never done this. has ever fallen over so I don't really see the need to put a single rod that goes straight through it won't stop the cake from moving back and forth unless it's actually screwed to the bottom board almost like a pipe that was instead, so that's my take on that method.

One last thing: a four- or three-tier cake can be quite heavy. Hmm. I highly recommend that for your bottom board you use a half inch wood board and then what I do is I cover them with Wilton fancy foil or some type of white foil and then I place the cake on top. You can use a foam board if you don't plan on traveling very far with the cake or lifting it from the edges, if the cake is small enough that you can reach under it and lift it, you don't need as strong a board, but certainly for a four-tier cake that I was going to transport, I would want a very sturdy one. wooden board that I can grab by the edges and I'm not going to worry at all about it bending and they're also available on our website, they're known as masonite cake boards so the basic tools that you need again for the cake If you need kind of a big spatula to lift the cakes and put them on, you need the speed icing if you don't want to add the frosting on the side with a spatula, so a nice big 18 inch piping bag and the speed icing.

Cover the filling with a little fondant to make the dam on each cake and then something to smooth the cake, either paper towels, Viva brand paper towels that do not have a pattern or computer paper and then a bowl with Hot water. your spatula and that's all you need one last thing. I didn't mention this is a four inch cake and this one too so I used the metal on the eco scraper for the 5 inch cake or if I had a six inch cake I would need a bigger scraper and this is a scraper and a side softer made by fat daddies who can easily make a six or seven inch cake and that's what I used in the larger tiers and they are also available on our website the last thing you need is the dowel rods hmm these are the half inch Polly dowel rods which are really great for the lower tiers when you go up to smaller tiers or if you are making a smaller cake you can use the quarter inch these are a buttercream color and these are cut and they are placed on the cake in exactly the same way and we will use them again later when we add flowers to our cake.

I hope you enjoyed the second part of the video on how to cut ice, fill and build. a wedding cake use the same technique whether you use a round cake a heart shaped cake a square cake whatever configuration you want the technique is the same when assembling the cake thanks for looking and remember everything is available at

global

sugar art comm have a great day you