Buttercream icing

[Hopeitsallok]

Hi I’m looking for some tips please.

Planning on making my ds a birthday cake and want to cover it with buttercream icing. Whenever I watch videos of people doing this it always goes on so smoothly and seems effortless but when I do it it seems to drag on the sponge and takes big chunks out of it!

Please help 😁

Maybe need to make it looser by adding a little milk to the mix. Or refrigerate the sponge for a short while before using it.

I'm no pro but I find dipping a palette knife into hot water and the smoothing the buttercream helps

Pop the cake in the freezer for a bit...then it's easier to ice.

You need to do a crumb coat. So a layer goes on and you put in the fridge to harden. Your next layer will go on smooth. Probably not explained well but you can google it.

Thanks, this is helpful. I think I am making it far too thick and that’s why it’s pulling the sponge. I’ll thin it down and try sticking the sponge in the fridge beforehand too

Thanks everyone 👍

Agree with the other posters. Freeze the cake and also do a crumb coat then fridge /freeze briefly

Also have a cup of hot water and a kitchen towel. Dip the palette knife in the water to heat it up then wipe it dry before using on the buttercream

Also I meant to ask how easy is it to cover with fondant icing? Again it looks easy but maybe it’s something I should practice beforehand, don’t want to make a hash of ds’s cake

A round cake is pretty easy to cover with fondant....you can even buy it pre rolled or buy the blocks and roll yourself. You can buy a kind of smoothing tool which helps to give a more professional finish.

Crumb coat plus warmed palate knife. And make sure you are using a thick enough coat, too thin is harder.