Cake Decorating for Beginners - How to Crumb Coat a Cake like a Pro

hey friends welcome back if you're new here my name is Steph I'm a triathlete a baker and an engineer and today I'm going to be teaching you how to stack fill and Crum coat your cakes this is cake decorating 101 kind of like the basics before you can do any real decorating okay let's go this is like the Bare Bones Basics everything you need to know to get a cake ready for your beautiful designs so like no she's not cute right now it's like the Cake's underwear no one's going to see it but it's that layer that goes underneath the beautiful top coat okay let's go over what we need to get started of course we need our cake layers I like to freeze mine makes it easier to work with them and it also locks in the moisture it's kind of a common misconception that Frozen cakes are dry um if you wrap them in plastic wrap shortly after they've come out of the oven when they're warm but not hot the steam that's evaporating off of them will get locked in and go back into the cake making them more moist than if you just let them cool on the counter plus when they're frozen they help the buttercream set faster and then that gives you a more stable cake we need something to put our cake on so I have this white cake drum you can decorate directly on a plate and I also have these clear acrylic ones that I really like for cakes that I make for myself cuz they're reusable we have buttercream a nice batch of silky smooth American buttercream my recipe is available on my website filling this is of course optional but I'm going to show you how to create a dam and stack your cake with fillings so I have a chocolate ganach filling turntable this is one of the most important pieces of equipment I would say it spins super smoothly there's a lot of like cheap plastic ones out there they're good for beginners but they're like wobbly and they don't spin as smooth so I'd highly recommend investing in this aluminum one if you're interested in cake decorating they also tend to be a bit higher which is better for your back it sounds silly but like working bent over a counter is not good for you this one you can stand like upright with it almost something to stick the cakeboard to the table I just have this little thing which is like you're supposed to put it in your um cupboards to protect your dishes but I just put that under the cakeboard so it doesn't slide around before I got that I used to just use a damp paper towel other tools offset spatula for applying frosting metal scraper for scraping the frosting Metals preferred to plastic because you can heat it up uh under hot water and then because we're doing a filling we have a Piping Bag and a piping tip this cookie scoop is like optional I'm going to show you what it could be used for I don't use it um but it can be really useful first thing you want to do is set up your area um sometimes with cake decorating you kind of have to go fast so I like to have everything in place before I get started and it's just easier to focus on your task if your area is organized we're going to prep the Piping Bag with a little bit of buttercream for the dam Piping Bag piping tip goes in the bag and then you're going to cut about halfway along the length of the piping Piping Bag so you'll back it up a little bit and then cut where it was halfway and then you can push it through and you're good to go to fill the bag you want to turn it inside out kind of like you're folding a pair of socks May just take a scoop of buttercream and pop it in push it to the bottom and then twist and we're good first thing we do stick the cake to the cake board with a dab of buttercream place the cake down and try to center it this is where the optional ice cream scoop comes into play um a lot of lot of Bakers swear by this as a way to evenly portion the icing out in their layers I just eyeball it looks pretty good to me um but I'm going to use it today maybe I'll love it and it's really useful if you're a beginner as a way to make sure you're doing things nice and evenly it also looks cool like just plopping it on there now we have our offset spatula and we're just going to press it down and smooth it out spinning the cake as we [Music] spread feel like two full Scoops is kind of a lot of Crossing so take a little bit [Music] off [Music] okay now we have our flat work tap so if you didn't have a filling this is where you would just take your next layer and put it on top but for the filling we're going to take that Piping Bag and pipe a ring around the perimeter of the cake you can do this by moving your hand but the easier way is to just have your hand stay still and turn the cake so your Piping Bag is on like a 45° angle and you're pushing the cake away from you and that buttercream is coming out [Music] so this is our border that's going to hold in our filling so we poured in our ganache wonderful we're going to put it on upside down and we take a little bit of buttercream and we're going to fill in any gaps around that border and just make sure it's sealed all the way around and there's no filling leaking out don't worry about coating the whole cake yet we're just making sure that it's fully [Music] sealed now we're just going to do nothing for a couple minutes while those frozen cake layers help set up the ganache and the buttercream so it's nice and sturdy then we're going to repeat the process with the next [Music] layer [Music] [Music] [Music] now that we've got it stacked and we again let it just do nothing for a few minutes it's time to do the crumb coat you want to work a little bit gently here just in case it hasn't fully set you don't want to like push too hard and have that gache smoosh out plon some frosting on top spread it out this is just supposed to be a thin layer so we're spreading this nice and thin don't mind if we see the cake through it I like to spread mine over the top so that it protrudes over the edge and then I kind of push that down the [Music] sides the whole point of the crumb coat is to lock in the crumbs that's why it's called a crumb coat so it's just a very thin lay layer of buttercream you want to make sure you're covering every bit of the cake and it acts as like a sealant so when you go to do your top decorative layer there won't be any crumbs that will poke through or get stuck in the [Music] frosting you have any gaps like that just grab some more buttercream and then stick it on spread it out and if I see the buttercream is thick somewhere else I'll kind of grab it from there and then go smear it where it's [Music] missing now we take our metal scraper you want to hold it about 45° to the cake um and you want to make sure the bottom is completely flat on the cakeboard so you're not scraping like this or like this and then you just again twist the cake and uh your hands your hand stays still it doesn't have to be perfectly smooth because no one's going to see this layer it's just to seal in those crumbs if when you're scraping um piz pieces of cake pop out you can just cover them a bit more frosting you have any big holes you need to cover you can take the butter cream that's on your scraper pull it off with your spatula and then stick it back on and we smooth [Music] again and then just make sure the top is clean so swiping away any of that Crown that's [Music] formed that's it the cake is stacked filled crumb coated and ready to be decorated now the cake goes in the fridge to let the buttercream set it usually takes about 20 minutes faster if you have Frozen cake layers once it's at the point where you can tap it and it's firm instead of the buttercream coming off on your finger then you're ready to start the next step which is decorating in case any of you guys were wondering what I did with that cake this is the final product it's one of the trendy rip to my 20s cakes for my friend's wife I actually have a full tutorial on how to make this style of cake as well and this shirt is available in my Etsy shop in a bunch of different colors thanks for watching if you guys have any specific questions leave them in the comments and I'll try to answer them or make a full video about that topic And subscribe for more baking [Music] tutorials

Channel: Still Busy Baking

Views: 31,389

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Id: u7di3JV_Kjw

Length: 11min 22sec (682 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 22 2024