Baking 101: a series circling around the basics of baking ingredients and kitchen techniques designed to sprinkle a confidence into our culinary lives.
Today: a step-by-step guide to frosting a three layer cake at home like a champion. Nothing too fancy. No fondant flowers. Just the basics to even frosting, smooth sides, and a spiral top. The basics with which to tuck another kitchen skill under our belts, gain kitchen confidence, and impress ourselves and our birthday companions.
AND! I’ll be frosting a cake LIVE on FACEBOOK today (8/2) around 2:00pm central. See you there!
Here’s what you’ll need to frost a 3-layer cake:
(Note: These items are as negotiable as you’d like. This is a pretty bare-bones list and the absense of these items won’t make for an awful cake… not at all… it just might make decorating a cake more difficult.)
• Three cake layers: Everybody’s Birthday Cake Chocolate frosting: The Best Chocolate Buttercream Frosting
• Cake Turntable for easily and smoothly rotating the cake as we frost it.
• Off-Set or Cake Decorating Knife for spreading frosting. One isn’t better than the other. It’s just about what you’re comfortable with.
• Disposable Piping Bag and a big ol pastry bag for spreading frosting and decorating.
• Decorating Tips and a large tip for distributing frosting and decorating. The match to the piping bags as you might imagine.
• Bench Knife for smoothing the sides and top of the cake.
• Sprinkles for sheer joy.
Tip: Let’s start with the cake and with the frosting. For this recipe I used 1 1/2x recipe of Everybody’s Birthday Cake and one full recipe of The Best Chocolate Buttercream Frosting. Cake layers must be completely cool before frosting. This is a non-negotiable rule and breaking it involves slipping cake layers, melting frosting, and tears (lots of tears). Frosting should be room temperature and easily spreadable. There’s no reason to fight cold or thick frosting.
Line a cake plate with four strips of parchment paper, layering the paper around the edges of the plate, creating a diamond in the center. Place a cake layer, top side up in the center of the paperless diamond.
We’re using a paper border to frost the cake to keep the cake plate clean. We’ll carefully remove the paper when the cake is done being frosted.
Tip: Fill a large pastry bag fitted with a very large tip with frosting. This makes for easy frosting distribution without tearing the cake crumb.
Starting on the outside edge of the cake, apply pressure to the bag and trace a thick line of frosting around the edge of the cake, making a spiral towards the center.
Use a cake decorating knife to evenly spread the frosting, allowing some of the frosting to gently fall over the sides of the first layer of cake.
Place the second cake layer, top side down, atop the first frosted layer.
If you need to trim the second make layer because it’s drastically uneven, carefully trim the top even before placing on the first layer.
Repeat the frosting trim and coil towards the center. If you’re keeping track, the frosting on each later will be a about 1/2 cup.
Use the cake decorating knife to again spread frosting in an even layer across the second cake, allowing some of the frosting the cascade down the sides.
Trim the top of the third and final cake layer and place, top side down, atop the second frosted layer. The bottom layer of the cake will face up, ensuring a super smooth and even cake top.
Press gently and check the sides of the cake with your hand to make sure the layers are placed on evenly.
Use the piping bag, you may need to refill it at this point, to again pipe a thick stripe of frosting around the edge of the cake, spiraling towards the center. Be a bit more generous with this layer as the frosting you place on top will also be worked down the sides of the cake for a thin crumb coat.
Rinse the knife in warm water and shake off excess water.
Work the frosting into an even layer across the top of the cake, pushing the excess frosting over the edge of the top cake layer.
Holding the knife vertically, use a short sweeping motion to spread the frosting across the sides.
The frosting that we allowed to cascade over the sides of the lower layers will come in handy here for lightly coating the sides of the cake.
A crumb coat is the thin layer of frosting that seals in any pesky crumbs. It doesn’t need to be perfect, the sides can show peeks of cake edges.
Refrigerate for at least 1 hour. It’s important that the crumb coat chill and set before we put on the final coat of frosting. Worth the effort. Trust the process with me.
After the crumb coat sets, remove from the fridge and again top the cake with a thick ribbon of frosting around the edges and spiraled towards the center.
Trace the sides of the cake in a ribbon of frosting as well.
Use the cake decorating knife to evenly spread frosting across the top of the cake, turning the rotating cake plate as necessary.
Holding the knife vertically, spread the frosting ribbons along the sides of the cake smooth. This doesn’t have to be perfectly smooth, just try to make sure that all sides have an even thickness of frosting and no naked cake layers show through.
I find that a clean and slightly warm (from the warm water) knife makes smoothing the frosting much easier.
Tip: Frequently rinse the knife in warm water, shaking off the excess and getting back to frosting. Frosting sticks to frosting and if you find yourself fighting to get the sides of a cake smooth with a pound of frosting on your knife, stop. Don’t fight the system. The frosting always wins. Pause. Rinse knife. Shake off excess water and heat back in.
Now to the final smoothing!
Tip: Use a bench scraper! Hold it vertically against the cake. Applying lightly firm and even pressure (this takes some practice but you can do it), spin the cake stand, holding the bench scraper in place. This will create a smooth finish along the side of the cake.
If you don’t have a bench scraper, use the knife you used to frost the cake. Rinsed, held vertical and still alongside the spinning cake.
Once the sides are smooth, gently and starting from the edges of the top of the cake, lightly scrape the frosting towards the center.
Now for the spiral!
Hold the cake decorating knife at a 45 degree angle so the tip meets the center of the cake.
This is similar to the motion we used to scrape the sides of the cake with the bench knife. Holding lightly firm and even pressure in the knife, begin the spin the cake (at a medium speed), smoothly working the knife out towards the edge of the cake as you spin. If you spin the cake too slowly, you’ll make your job harder. Just give it a spin and see how it goes. You can always clean the knife, smooth the top of the cake, and try again.
They don’t call em sprinkles for nothin’.
Along the edges of wherever makes you feel good!
Before the cake is completed, remove those four parchment paper protectors.
Tip: Remove the paper from under the cake before you place the cake in the refrigerator to set. Once the cake frosting has set, the paper when removed will take more pretty frosting than you want from the sides of the cake.
How about a border along the edge of the cake?
I used a medium round tip and most of the remaining frosting to make a simple border.
Holding the tip at a 45 degree angle, squeeze pressure into the bag creating a ball of frosting. Release some of that pressure while pulling the tip slightly down and towards you.
This may take a bit of practice. You can always just do simple dots around the border if you’d like.
Refrigerate for at least one hour to set frosting.
And that’s a cake! Time to celebrate (yourself and the birthday someone)!
For others in the Baking 101 Series, see:
How To Crack and Separate An Egg
and
The Best Cake Flour Substitutes
Happy Baking (and frosting)!
xo Joy
Photos with the talented and cat-like Jon Melendez.
Natalie
Hi Joy! I love your everybody’s birthday cake. I want to make it into a 3 layer 9 inch round cake like you did here. For the 1 1/2 cake recipe, how did you measure the eggs? Thanks!!
John
Who is best :D
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gf-xJ7bD4GY
Edwina
Frosting always puts me off a recipe. So many times I’ve liked the look of a cake recipe and I end up baking it as muffins for the family so I can avoid frosting!
These tips are really helpful. I am inspired to do frosting again. I need the right tools though. Will have to go shopping first.
Loganayaki
I love your blog and recipes. I’ll try out this recipe for sure.
Amy
You make it look so easy
Eden Passante
You make frosting a cake look so effortless! I also like to put a layer of parchment paper around the edges of the bottom of the cake. That way, when you’re done frosting you can pull off the parchment paper and it’s one clean bottom.
Alison
Thank you! I just read this post from top to bottom, cheers for explaining it step by step for us laypersons! I’ve never had much time for layer cakes, but you make it look easy! ;)
Sian
How many eggs did you use for the 1.5 recipe?
Demetra Panagou
Regarding dipping your knife in the warm water and shaking it before carrying on with the frosting, won’t the water on the knife affect the frosting?
joythebaker
Not it you shake it off mostly. You just want to use a clean knife.
Lindsay | Sprinkles for Breakfast
This is such a great tutorial on how to frost a cake correctly! I have seen so many online, but you really give some amazing tips. I feel like a lot of people forget about the warm water trick, but it works so well!. Thanks for sharing.
Rabia
Thanks, this is helpful!
Katie's Time Travelling Kitchen
This is really useful, thank you! :)
Lisa
I made my FIRST cake thanks to your guidance. I was so motivated after seeing your post that I ordered everything on Amazon Prime and got baking ASAP. It turned out pretty well, a little lopsided and not enough frosting between layers, but good. Now I am trying to figure out how to keep it fresh while we try to finish it off.
Thanks!
Liz
Looks so yummy. Such great tips. Makes me want to make one right now!
Monica
My biggest thing that upped my frosting game was learning that a lot of people freeze the cake layers, then stack them. I kept having layers crack and crumble when I’d try to stack and handle them, and then I’d get a bunch of crumbs in the frosting. Freezing the layers first solved all the problems, and now I have people not only jealous of how tasty the cake is, but how it looks too! :D
Cait
I think putting the cake in the freezer works for me in-between frostings, because it gets so hot in the kitchen the frosting just melts off. The tools definitely make a difference!
joythebaker
I like your thoughts!
Tracy
Thank you Joy! This is so helpful!
brownbutterandbiscuits
I watched your facebook live video on this yesterday–so many great tips!!
keshakeke
Wow! This is so helpful! I love baking cakes and decorating them. I have never used a bench scraper. I must buy one. I also never let the crumb coat set in the fridge. My eyes have been opened to all new decorating. I can’t wait to try this! I do have a question about the cake recipe. I see you used 1 and 1/2x the recipe. How many e? I always use boxed mix but I am trying to find a great homemade recipe!
joythebaker
1 1/2x the cake recipe will make three layers. Secret: I LOVE CAKE MIX so I don’t blame you.
Victoria Sponge Pease Pudding
I LOVED your Facebook live on this Joy, how I never knew the spiral trick and the bench scraper to get smooth sides I’ll never know but thank you for sharing your cake wisdom with us!
http://victoriaspongepeasepudding.com/
Natalie
Mmmm, this makes me want to bake a cake like right now. With lots of sprinkles!
meikoandthedish
Oh this is good … this is real good!
Autumn Hope
This is so helpful! I am still trying to master the art of frosting a cake, but I am getting there. I recently bought a cake scraper and its so much harder to use than I thought!
Faith from Home Ec @ Home
I’ve frosted lots of cakes over the years including two wedding cakes and this cool large tiered birthday cake which we traveled with for a 5 hour drive (http://www.homeecathome.com/the-home-economist/two-tiered-celebration-cake-and-transporting-a-cake), and I still learned some new things from your post. Thanks for sharing. I am going to share on facebook. My readers will love this!
knitandlitblog
This is the one thing in baking I just can’t seem to get. I find myself screaming “THIS IS WHY I HATE YOU” at the cake in the middle of the process. I always end up heavy handed, scalping the frosting off the cake as I’m trying to smooth it. But you make it look so easy, so I’ll have to give it another shot.
Ashlyn @ The Pedantic Foodie
I love this! So, so helpful! I hate making cakes for this very reason – the frosting! But, you have inspired me to give it another try!
Maria
I took a job at a bakery as an already accomplished baker. The BEST, SINGLE BEST thing I learned there is that they would take the cakes out of the oven and roll them right into the freezer! You don’t have to do exactly that, but I do bake them, cool them mostly, then put them straight (on a rack, uncovered) into the fridge until they are cold. So much easier than trying to frost a soft and very fragile cake. You must trust this! Frost it cold or even frozen and you are working with a whole different animal! Infinitely easier and totally forgiving! My concern was condensation, but it is not an issue. I also do like to keep most of my cakes refrigerated, but I live in Florida and some of that Is personal preference.
Do this. It will change your cake-baking life!! :)
Lori
I haven’t made a cake like this in years. This is delicious and inspiring!
Juliadream
Thank you! This is so good!
Betsy Siegmund
Clear, helpful and tasty suggestions, Joy. Thank you. Excellent photos, too. Betze Browne
searedandshameless
the is literally, LITERALLY my arch-nemesis of baking. I hate frosting cakes. I’ll definitely have to try this out soon! You make it look so simple. Hopefully I can manage this without making a horrible mess!!!
https://www.searedandshameless.com
Gemma
Gorgeous! Super handy tips and I may be wiping drool from my face right now…
A wee question… When you put your cake in the fridge to set the frosting, do you just whack it in uncovered or am I a total goon and am missing some major baking knowledge? Also, once the cake is done and half eaten, do you store yours in the fridge uncovered then or wrap it in something? Please help, I’m afraid of trusting my own instinct and ruining cake. That would be disastrous!
Gemma
http://www.fadedwindmills.com
Lottie Gibbons
I’m meant to be on a diet Joy!! Ugh this looks so good… knowing me though I would probably end up eating the icing before putting it on the cake! x
http://flareaforte.blogspot.co.uk
Lizzie
I never put my cake in the fridge after the crumb layer and sometimes really struggle to get the frosting to stick, will definitely try this next time! Great tips :)
http://www.thebutter.co.uk/