How to Frost a Half Sheet Cake

[Music] okay so we have our cooled sheet cake half sheet cake on a cookie rack I actually wired this cookie rack together so that I could cool my sheet cakes on it I'm sure they make bigger cookie racks but I've been doing it this way for years so that's how I continue to do it but this has been cooling so it's just barely warm in the center so it's ready to start trimming and when I make my sheet cakes I usually trim off the edges because they get really really done really crispy from you know the baking process so it just cut just the the very edge off of that not you know we don't want to waste cake so not too much and I I like to use the this ginso knife I've been using this for six years now you that nice clean Edge now instead of a brown crusty Edge now you could put a uh half sheet cardboard on top of this and then you know ice it seamlessly but for what I'm actually doing right now these are going to be tasting cakes so I'm just taking my Wilton card board here and putting that on top cuz these are just going to go straight into the box flip it over see this is where I just wired it together there just kind of Center this on the board I'm going to take my turntable and then I'm going to take my uh turntable extender from Innovative sugar works this just pops right onto the turntable and the reason I like this is because it doesn't move around so if you were to use a cutting board and put it on top it still could potentially move around but this just fits right on there and it's kind of Genius so now this is uh all trimmed down looks very nice trim off any edges you might have missed and then some people like to trim off the top uh but I actually leave mine just how it is but I am going to pop this into the freezer to get it really chilled before I start doing my crumb coat and all of that because it is still warm in the center so if I were to crumb coat it now my icing would melt that's not what we want and I also want to be able to split this in half so that I can put a filling in it so I want it to get real firm in the freezer so that I can trim it up and put a filling in it without any problems of it uh breaking or you know falling apart and by the way this recipe for my vanilla cake is on my website Artisan cake comp.com recipes okay so our cake is all chilled in the freezer and I'm just going to run my knife just about an inch in all the way around just to start my cutting process and then I'm going to make little sa motions do not force this just go slowly all the way around we're just sawing more and more towards the center keep your knife nice and level don't try and force it just let the knife do the work right now I should be able to just lift this off just place that right over there and I have just a couple little rough spots that's no big deal got my nice beautiful crumb on the inside of the cake and I'm just going to put a thin layer of my strawberry syrup that is uh in my book that just came out Artisan cake company's visual guide to cake decorating and uh I just like this for when I do my lemon cake you don't have to obviously do this I just like this because it makes it nice and uh moist for my first layer and then I'm going to take some of my strawberry buttercream which is again just some of my strawberry syrup worked into some Swiss Marine buttercream and that's going to be my filling I'm going to put a nice thick layer of the buttercream on the inside and because these boards are not super strong this uh turntable extender really helps me keep my Bo from bending so I don't get any cracks down the center which is very nice I must say it takes about a batch and a half to two batches of Swiss Marine buttercream this uh strawberry buttercream tastes a lot like strawberry ice cream like Neapolitan ice cream that's totally what it tastes like at least to me it does I think it'd actually be really good with chocolate cake and uh maybe vanilla frosting and strawberry filling you have like a neopolitan cake actually don't do that that's my idea don't take my idea all right so I'm going to take my top and see if this was not chilled we'd have a real problem moving that top around just press that down and I like to use the swis Maring buttercream because it has butter in it so it makes everything nice nice and nice and stiff and firm so now I'm going to take some of my regular white vanilla buttercream Swiss Maring still and I'm just going to do a quick crumb coat all over this cake and we call it a crumb coat because you're literally sealing in the crumbs the purpose is not to be making a nice layer of buttercream the purpose is to seal in the crumbs so that when we go and put our final coat of buttercream on here we don't get crumbs from the cake inside of our final finish because we want it to be nice and pretty so once we seal this all with buttercream I'm going to put it back into the freezer till it's pretty firm I'd say at least a couple hours or you could put it into the fridge to chill overnight it's a nice thin layer of buttercream and into the freezer we go if you put this in into the fridge the buttercream is actually going to seal in the moisture of the cake so you don't have to worry about it getting dried out from bring being in the fridge because it is protected by the buttercream pretty cool huh okay phase two we're going to coat our large cutting board in a layer of shortening and I'm going to take our parchment nice long piece of [Applause] [Music] [Applause] parchment now we're going to take our regular white buttercream vanilla buttercream or what whatever buttercream you're using and we're just going to put nice layer I am not a very good buttercream person decorator buttercream is definitely my weakness so obviously you know a lot of people they can do this without these cheats and this might seem more difficult to you if you're doing it if you if you're able to ice a buttercream cake with no problem but this is just a tutorial for the way that I do it because I have to work around my [Music] weaknesses all right and then I'm actually going to just build up these Corners just a tad cuz remember this was a rounded cake so this will just make it a little bit flatter on top and because our cake is pretty pretty darn chilled it's going to set up really fast build up all the edges don't worry if it's perfect or not and then grab onto this with holding the edges of the paper so it doesn't flip off so you got your hands holding the paper both sides and we're going to just quickly put this right on top so it seems kind of scary but it should be okay I'm just going to press this down wiggle it give it a little wiggle just look down make sure that basically you want the buttercream to start squishing out cuz we're getting out all the air and this is what makes it flat right so now with one hand underneath the sheetcake and one hand on top one two three up and flip over I know that seems very scary but because everything's chilled you know it it's fine it's not I mean it's sandwiched between two boards so it's not going to fly off I'm just going to peel off my board it's a little stuck on I've got a spot that's sticking so I'm just using a knife to just kind of Cut the Cake away from the board so don't do this put put parchment between the board and the cake because we want it to come off before we're done decorating and then we'll put the board back on so I'm sorry I forgot that part going to pull this this way just a tad so that I have enough space around the whole cake now I'm just going to start adding in my second layer of buttercream very helpful for the next step by the way I do my square cakes exactly the same way go figure huh they're just usually not this big so next we're going to use something called a fat girl bench scraper this thing is awesome for helping you to get really straight lines around your cakes so we take our bench scraper and we're just going to hold it kind of at a 45° angle and slowly just straight up and down it's just resting right on top of the cutting board and it basically makes a nice straight it's always best to start at the corner and then work your way back towards the center just keep on shaving off little by little you can always build your Corners up if you need to so when it looks okay like this is about smoothed out to the okay stage I'm going to toss this back into the freezer for probably 20 minutes or so just to get the outside buttercream to chill up even harder so that I can really work on getting my Corners super sharp just to make sure that I build those up when cold buttercream is a little bit easier to scrape down this is a little little bit warm in my kitchen so I'm going to put this back in the freezer for about 10 10 20 minutes okay back on the board see if I can line it up where it was before these boards are seriously so flimsy not my favorite okay sandwich between your hands one two three [Applause] flip so off Comes The Cutting Board and then we peel off our parchment we have nice flat top much flatter than what I would be able to do without the parchment so now you can just take your bench scraper and just clean up the edges and that's basically [Music] it [Music] once you have your Corners about finished and you feel like they're almost smooth just turn your smoother bench scraper horizontally to finish smoothing the corners and it gets that nice sharp edge couple little spots on the top that have some some wrinkles and some pits so I'm just going to put like a very very thin layer of buttercream over the top and I'm actually going to put ganache over the top of this so this isn't actually 100% necessary but just for this just in case you know you're not putting ganach on the top of your sheetcake I wanted to show you exactly how to get it perfectly smooth so that's it guys that's how you make a perfectly square perfectly level uh half sheet cake you can also do this with quarter sheet cake this is how I do all of my squares because I just stuck up buttercream of course you can do it a different way but this is how I do it and I hope you picked up a couple of tips that were helpful don't forget to subscribe to the channel and if you're a patron thank you very much for being a patron and uh I'll see you guys guys next [Music] time

Channel: Artisan Cake Company

Views: 2,843,930

Keywords: Frost, Frosting, Cake, Sheet Cake, Do It Yourself (Hobby), strawberry buttercream, half sheet cake, Cake Decorating, Icing (Food)

Id: 8wqL9MkLLlM

Length: 16min 38sec (998 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 05 2015