Cake Decorating, How to Ice a 1/2 Sheet Cake In Butter Cream

hi I'm Liz Larson back with some cake decorating basics today I'm going to show you how to block half sheet cake how to flip how to block it how to get it level let's get started so these are the tools that we're going to use for blocking or icing a Hashi cake I just want to introduce you to a few of them we'll use all of them show you how to use them this is actually a drywall tool that you get at a building supply store for just a few cents this is called the table scraper or bench knife this is my quick icer handy dandy quick riser a long spatula and this is called an offset and this is a cake knife if you need a serrated long knife for cutting your cake for trimming so I have my half sheet cake here on a half sheet board and you can see that it's actually a little large and I'm going to show you how to trim that this half sheet was baked in a cookie sheet so you can see that it's nice and level and I don't have to do any splitting today we're going to film with pastry cream but I'm going to show you that if you were going to use a more of a fruit cream what you would do but half an inch in you would put a nice thick line you can see I'm just using the end of a coupler this creates a dam so that your fruit fillings don't leak out and get into your decoration so for this cake we're just gonna use some pastry cream and this is just some vanilla pudding mixed with some pastry pride I showed you how to do that on the decadent chocolate cake video so that's about how much you want and this is where the offset comes in great you see that I'm up above my cake I want to start to move my filling around not lifting up too much off I don't want to pull my cake back off I want to use an s-shape motion and you want to get as even as possible here push all the way out to your corners and finish up watch for me for levelness here there you go this is actually the bottom side of the cake for the cake that would be on the bottom of the pan we want this side and it's matching side on the inside so that'll make a little more sense as I flip it I use these cakes mostly frozen they're easier to turn and I'm going to show you how to turn down so you want to get these cakes lined up and as you'll see as they turn this cake that it does have wax paper on the back side that cakes it keeps it nice and stable and it also keeps my hands out of the cake and as you can see my cake is already pretty level and that's what I'm going for and we'll peel off that wax paper and now we're ready to trim so a lot of daiquiri czar free to trim their half sheets but I think it's essential to get a nice square cake and you want it to fit on your board well we want to be able to put some beautiful decorations here and not be limited by the size of our cake so as we can see this one doesn't quite line up so we're just going to take our cake knife score so that we make sure we're nice and even and just cut that off they're still kind of frozen so you can see I get a nice even slice put that aside we'll use it for cake slices later if you can kind of see that I'm turning here so I have better access and I'm gonna go ahead and score again I'm cutting here about a half an inch just make sure that you're nice and straight and go ahead and cut that right off and you'll see as I cut it that I'm giving myself lots of space to ice and decorate not even too much on my board there let's give that a little trim now I'm going to go ahead and turn and do the other side another great use for your cake trimmings is for leveling so I can see that on this corner of my cake I'm a little bit low so I can take a slice of my cake and tuck it right in the corner there to get my leveling leveling on a quarter sheet or on any cake really is really the most important thing you've all heard the old telling you saying you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear well you can't make a beautiful cake out of an unlevel one to start with okay now we can ice okay so I've got my handy dandy quick icer here and I'm going to start to do the top of my cake but I want to show you before another little trip is here quick guys are for leveling if you just need a little bit you can also lift up here put a little bit of your icing and level that way too so to start I want to use my quick guys are here don't forget to wind up get your pressure in the back you're at a 45 degree angle here and begin your first right now you can see that it's hanging over a little bit that's exactly what we want we're gonna use that little bit of a lip to crumb ice our sides so this is a commercial trick you don't need to Chrome ice your whole cake especially if you don't have a lot of crumbs and you really don't at this point that's another trick of working with frozen cake okay now I can do one of two things I can continue to fill in with my quick geyser which works great or I can also put a blob of icing on which works great now here's where I want to use my long spatula so I can get all the way across the cake when you start to smooth on icing you don't want to be lifting up see that it's once smooth motion I'm not picking my spatula back up again okay so you can see how that works or if I'm going to use this side I just use one white maybe two so you can see putting it on with the quick answer is a lot easier but either way is fine and you can see here in just a few seconds as I turn my cake to get the best angle I've got a nice smooth cake I'm continuing on with my long spatula you'd want to be trading out your equipment too much a kind of waste of time but you can see here that I'm going to use it to wipe down this edge and give myself a little crumb ice on the side now you can also see that it's pushing up a lip on top and that's perfect I want that to keep my corners nice and square this should take you no more than about 30 seconds I'd say I've got a nice crumb ice on there and then I'm back to my foot geyser okay so the nice thing about a quick geyser and a half sheet is you usually just need one stripe so nice even pressure pull towards yourself stop just past the end of the cake begin again on this inside lip we want to have nice sturdy corners so we'll leave ourselves a little extra icing just past the end of the cake we'll begin again just inside again if we're doing this quickly not more than about 30 seconds there we go now on this side it looks like I'm gonna need a little more so I'm gonna go ahead and put that second stripe right over the top so here's where we begin with a couple of different tools I'm going to start with my bench knife and you want to make sure that you're holding this really straight up and down so that you're not this way or this way pull that lip that we created and nice even pressure and just pull right towards yourself and you can go ahead and do that one more time and you see you've got a nice smooth side there you don't want to overwork your cakes to get a nice corner here we're gonna pull again that little lip straight back and one more time now just for fun I am gonna switch tools just to show you how to use this one so it's a little big for the sides but same thing straight up and down pull straight back towards yourself and just back around that corner to get a nice square so we've got nice square edges now I don't have to take this tool out of my hand I can use this one just to pull straight across so you can see my fingers are pretty flat on top that gives me my stability thumb on the backside and just wipe down that edge gently so we're pulling the lip that we created in it's good to start on your corners but this covers your corners and about half the cake so it's kind of a nice tool for that okay continue to wipe in between whether using a spatula or this tool now with this tool I can just pull pretty much straight across the top get a nice smooth top and I just want to come back this way one more time and there you go I've got nice corners nice smooth edges touch up just a little if you wish so now you have the skills and the tools that you need to professionally decorate a half sheep a quarter sheet a square anything with this rectangular or square shape I hope you learned a lot today don't forget to subscribe and ask me any kind of questions that you have so I'm going to clean up my board here as I say goodbye and I'll see you next time [Music]

Channel: Liz Larson

Views: 375,676

Keywords: Sheet Cake, Cake Decorating (Profession), buttercream, cake tips, baking, pastry pride, whip topping, cake decorator, Liz Larson, the art of frosting

Id: bvCLSzwswb0

Length: 12min 2sec (722 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 08 2013