How To Make Your Own Buttercream Wedding Cake | Part 1 | Global Sugar Art

[Music] hi I'm chef Alan Tatro with global sugar art and in this episode I'm going to show you how to do how to make a buttercream wedding cake we're gonna start with the cakes already baked I'm going to show you how to slice them fill them ice them how to put dowel rods in the cake to support the structure and how to build a tiered cake and you can use this for any size or any shaped cake that you desire so I'm gonna begin I have two 10-inch cakes already baked and we have charts on our website at global sugar com on how many cups of batter you need to to make each size cake generally a good rule of thumb for the average type of cake is between 1/2 and 2/3 full of batter so if you're not sure exactly how much batter you need for your pan all you have to do is pour water in the pan and up to just a little over 1/2 halfway maybe two-thirds at the most and then dump the water out and measure it and that will tell you how many cups of batter you need for that particular cake pan it's not hard to figure out at all we do sell cake mixes and a regular Allen Tate will select Deluxe cake mix makes about 4 cups of batter so you can figure out how many cake mixes you need as well so to begin after my cake is baked and I even inverted it and I've let it cool on a rack I put them back in the pan and I do this because these are 2 inch pans and I want my final cake on these bottom tiers these first two tiers I want them to be 4 inches high so by cutting these flat I'm going to get 2 layers that will make one tier that is 4 inches high for the top two tiers on this cake I wanted them 5 inches high so I would have baked 3 cakes cut the tops off them and on one of them I would have sliced the cake in half and I would have added that extra 1/2 layer to give another of cake use a nice long serrated knife or like a slicing knife and just go right along the very top of the pan and I like to turn the pan rather than cut straight across if you cut straight across sometimes it can wave a little bit or you it doesn't quite always get it as even as you want and then once you cut all the way around you can just remove the extra cake and I'm gonna do the same on this one I'm just letting that knife rest right across the top of the pan there we go and let's see I've got a sheet pan here I'm just gonna put this extra cake in the pan okay the next step is to put the cake on some sort of a board in between every single cake there is either a cardboard circle or I really like using these foam boards these are quarter inch foam boards which are much sturdier they have a plastic top on them so they're grease proof and there and they work really really well in a tiered cake so you can either use the cardboard or the foam my choice is usually the foam piece you'll notice that I have a set of foam dummies set up back here that's the exact same size as this wedding cake mm-hmm I'll be using the foam dummies a lot and throughout the process of this wedding cake to show you exactly how things are done and if you're a beginner in cake decorating having a set of foam dummies to practice on before you actually make the wedding cake is very very very helpful and you'll see why as we go along hmm so I have a 10 inch cake and a 10 inch circle and I'm just gonna put that on top of the cake and invert that right over and put it on my turntable now the reason I'm putting it on a 10 inch circle is when I stack these cakes I don't want the cake circle sticking out I want it to be flush with my icing coming down the sides of the cake now one of the things that I forgot to do that I that I generally do before I put the cardboard circle on I will take a little bit of buttercream and this will help to stick that circle to the cake so it doesn't slide so that's one important part you really should do okay now I'm ready now in order to ice this cake if I do it now I'm going to have icing down the side of my turntable so I'm actually going to put the entire thing on a little bit larger cake cake circle and that will give me room to work so I'm going to Center that on there and the first thing I'm going to do is put a very very light layer of buttercream there are many different ways you can fill a nice a cake this is just one way even though I'm going to use a lemon filling in this cake I still like to put a nice thin layer of buttercream and what that does is it seals the cake so that the filling isn't absorbed by the cake and when you cut the cake a day or two days later you still have a nice layer filling in there any fruit filling is water-based and the cake will gradually absorb that and it sort of disappears into the cake and you get it shows like you that you have less and less filling as every day goes by so that's the beginning now I'm gonna take some fondant now this is a buttercream wedding cake but this is one place where I will use some fondant one of the problems with buttercream wedding cakes is after you ice them about eight or ten hours later sometimes the next day you'll start seeing a little bulge right around the middle of the cake and anybody who's made wedding cakes with buttercream icing will tell you that this happens all the time part of it is that the cake is settling overnight and the air that's trapped in all the layers of the cake slowly pushes out and it pushes that buttercream out so we have a little solution to this and I'll give you an alternative to this as well so I'm just rolling this fondant into a little bit of a rope and I'm going to put this all the way around the outside edge it doesn't need to be very thick this is just going to prevent the filling from squishing out and from the buttercream bulging out so I just want inside the cake now if you want to be if you want a true buttercream wedding cake and you don't want to deal with the fun that at all you can take some of your buttercream icing in a small bowl and keep adding some powdered sugar to it until it becomes so stiff that you can actually put it on the board and you can roll it and and you actually will get to that consistency so you actually could use the buttercream and just thicken it a lot with powdered sugar and then roll it out the same way I did the fondant but you can now buy fondant in a little 8 ounce package so it's it's easy and it's quick I've got some luscious lemon cake filling this is one of the alan Tatro brands and it's all ready to go this doesn't need to be refrigerated so this is perfectly safe to make your wedding cake and leave it out there we have quite a variety we have raspberry strawberry blueberry lemon we have icing fillings like a German chocolate icing cream cheese icing and we also have a chart on our website buy these fillings telling you how much filling you need for each size tier so now I'm ready to put the second layer on this is probably one of the handiest little tools I have this is made by phat daddy-o's this is a cake lifter when you're working with an even larger cake like this like if I were icing my 14 or a 16 inch cake use a pizza peel if you have won us a an aluminum pizza peel not a wooden one but they're usually about 14 or 16 inches in diameter or square and they're great for lifting a large cake so I'm gonna put that right under flip the cake out and then just lay that right on top and just Center that and now I'm ready to ice this cake mmm the first thing I'm going to do is ice the top of the cake I've used some of the Allen Tatro buttercream and this is flavored with our Bridal blend mmm and when you buy the buttercream or if you want to make your own the recipe is on our website make sure that you put it in the mixer before you you use it if you've made it ahead of time or if you're purchasing the icing and whip it on a very low speed for about five or six minutes at least it will get super creamy and soft and easy to work with so I do the top first and then I'm using what they call a quick ice tube by Wilton I think it's a tube 789 and I put this in a number an 18-inch pastry bag or you can use a disposable bag as well basically yet what I'm going to do is I'm going to pipe the icing on the side of this cake I'm going to start at the bottom and just go right around the cake you can see how quick and easy this is and the nicest part is you don't get any crumbs you're covering the cake all in one movement and the top don't be afraid to put too much butter cream on your cake the first time it's much easier to take some off than to be trying to smooth the sides of the cake and your digging into the cake and pulling up crumbs and then you have to keep adding layer and layer of buttercream on the top of it to try to fix the mistake so always start with more buttercream than you need I'm just going to bring the top in first and then I'm gonna use a bowl of hot water I've just heated up in the microwave let me grab that so this is just warm water and I'm using an ax T Co this is a dough cutter or a side scraper I like it because it lays flat this way and when I put this on the side of the cake I can lie it flat on this larger cake board that's one of the reasons I wanted a larger cake board and I can smooth the sides so I'm just going to dip that in the warm water you don't have to dry it off and I'm going to do this in a couple movements I'm not going to do it all at once because I'm taking off a fair amount of icing okay I don't have to clean the buttercream off I really I just want this to be wet a little bit and that looks pretty good we're gonna be smoothing this using the paper towel or paper method so that's all I have to do on the side but now I want to get the top so I'm going to do the same thing I'm just gonna dip that in the water come in from the outside edge toward the middle never go from the middle out when you look at the wedding cake there's only about an inch and a half that shows on each one on the edge so you don't have to worry about the center it's just the outside edge if I have a lot of cake to do or if I'm going to be icing several cakes at one time I'll usually use a pan of hot water that I can just put back on the stove for a minute or two or if you have a microwave right next to you you can just hole up put the bowl back in to reheat it and that's all I'm gonna do at this point the icing is straight it's quite smooth I could almost decorate it the way it is but I'm gonna let this dry now just taking off any little extra icing I'm going to let this dry especially because I dipped my spatula in water I can see a little bit of water on the icing so I'm gonna give this about five or ten minutes to dry and then we're going to come back and I'm gonna use the paper towel and computer paper regular copy paper to show you the two different things you can use to get a super super smooth finish on buttercream and then we'll go on to stacking the cake we'll be right back I've let this icing set now and dry for about 10 minutes now this is all going to depend on the humidity in your environment and in your kitchen where I live it's rather dry so it's not a problem if you can just touch the the side of it and it doesn't stick to your finger you know it's ready so there are two things you can use to smooth this further at this point you can use the vive brand paper towels or whatever brand you have in your your area or your country that doesn't have a pattern on them if it has a quilted pattern you're gonna have a quilted cake so if you want to find a paper towel without that pattern if you can't find it good old computer copy paper works just as well so I begin with the top I just lay this on the top and I'm using a fondant smoother if you don't have a fondant smoother you can use your hand and I'll show you that and I'm just going to lightly press and I'm working from the outside in remember just like icing the cake I don't want to push that icing out over the edge and you can see that start smoothing if you don't have one of those just use your hand just push down a little bit try not to leave any finger marks you don't want to push too hard you can see all the little areas I'm not going to worry about the top too much because most of its not going to show so now when you get to the side just to show you that you can use either product I'm going to put a piece of computer paper on here and I'm going to use the fondant smoother and just lightly go up and down and back and forth and then pull that away and you can see how that starts smoothing out the cake was not very rough to begin with but if you're a beginner and you don't have a lot of experience icing a cake you're gonna find that this will really hide a lot of mistakes you made when you are icing the cake this really isn't taking much at all this is a good spot this is where I pulled the the scraper away from the cake so let's see what it does to that area can you get a good shot of that okay and then we'll see just how smooth we can make that you can see it's it pretty well disappears you're gonna see a little bit of the seam but the unevenness is now gone there that looks pretty good and that's really all I want to do just to show you again you can use either one either the paper towel or the paper and it doesn't stick to the buttercream and you don't have to use this for a wedding cake you can use this for a birthday cake or any cake you're making if you want a really nice buttercream finish that's a great way to do it so now we do all the cakes the same get them all smooth and of course they've dried a little bit and then we're gonna go on and we're going to stack the cake we'll be right back and show you how to put it all together the cakes have all been iced they've all been smooth you'll notice some are smoother than others I purposely didn't smooth my bottom tier because I'm gonna be piping on a decoration all around the tier so it doesn't matter how smooth the bottom is it's going to be covered I did make sure that the top edge here was smooth but that's all I really worried about so I'm going to grab one of my my dummy parts here this is a cake circle which is the same size as this third tier I'm going to lay it right on top of the buttercream icing now I just showed you how to smooth the icing using a paper towel or a piece of computer paper and this is a crusting buttercream so it's dry enough that I can put something on it and it's not going to stick to it and that's one of the beauties of working with a with a crusting buttercream so I'm putting this this is the same size tier as my next tier and I'm going to Center it on there and then use a little scribing tool or toothpick and just go around the outside edge and just put a little mark in there you'll probably not see this on camera but it's enough for me to know exactly where my next tier needs to be placed now I have five places that I want to put a dowel rod in I need to create an internal support so that this cake doesn't tip over and that if I need to travel with it or bring it to a reception hall it's not going to fall over on me so inside this circle I'm going to put five Polly dowels and these are a plastic doll rod that are reinforced and I know that I'm going to be putting them in these five places I've just chosen four and then one in the middle and what you do is put your dowel rod up against the side of the cake and use a pen and Mark where the top of your cake is or you can simply measure and figure out exactly how high you need that to be and then using a pair of heavy kitchen scissors or even better yet a pair of pruning snips that you would use on it like small trees or brushes works even better and then just cut and measure your $5 odds and then it's a very easy matter of just pushing that dowel rod right in the cake and I want them to go just below the level of the buttercream I don't want them to stick up at all and I know I have a fifth one so now we've supported the that we're gonna support the second tier with these five dowels and if you remember when I iced the cake under this larger plate there is a plate the same size as this cake so that is going to sit flat on here I'm going to use this large spatula again and I'm gonna get right under that cake and I'm gonna lift it up and I'm gonna align it right where I left my marks and then pull that out and you'll be able to lightly move the cake a little bit if you need to readjust it so now all the weight from this cake is laying on the on the board you just show you here all the weight of this cake is sitting on this board and that board is sitting on the supports that I put in the cake so there's no weight on this bottom tier it's all being transferred to the dowel rods and going right down to that bottom board now I'm gonna repeat the exact same thing I would then take my next my next cake size put that on top scribe all around it put in four on the cake this size probably for no more than five dollar odds and then put my next tier on and then repeat that before you put your top tier on and that way all the weight from the very top of the cake goes through every set of pillars onto the board below through the pillars through the board and then down to the base and then you have a perfectly straight cake that's not going to lean back and forth no matter how warm it gets outside or if you want to transport it'll be nice and solid okay so I've stacked my my cake I have dowel rods in the bottom tier this in tier and the third tier and they're all supporting from the top down one of the popular things that you're seeing some decorators do now is taking a very long dowel rod like a quarter inch dowel rod and going down the center of the cake and basically pounding this in through the boards right to the bottom I feel that that is completely unnecessary in my opinion I don't think it does anything for the cake if you have this completely supported with dowel rods this cake is not going to tilt in either direction it's going to stay as sturdy and straight as can be and I have made six seven and eight tier wedding cakes like this and they have never ever fallen over so I really don't see the need to put a single dowel rod that dowel rod going straight through is not going to prevent your cake from moving from one side to the other unless it were actually screwed to the bottom board almost like a pipe that was in place so that's my opinion on on that method one last thing a four-tier cake or a three-tier cake can be rather heavy hmm I highly recommend for your bottom board that you use a half-inch wooden board and then what I do is I cover them with like the Wilton fancy foil or some sort of a white foil covering and then place your cake on that you can use a foam board if you're not planning on traveling very far with the cake or with lifting it from the edges if the cake is small enough where you can get your hand under and lift it you don't need as strong a board but certainly for a four tiered cake that I was going to be transporting I would want a very sturdy wooden board that I can grab on the edges and I'm not going to worry about that bending at all and these are available on our website as well these are known as masonite cake boards okay so the basic tools you need again for the the cake is you need some sort of a large spatula to lift the cakes and put them on you need the quick icer if you don't want to add the frosting on the side with a spatula so a nice big 18-inch pastry bag and the quick icer your filling a little bit of fondant to make the the dam on each cake and then something to smooth the cake either the paper towels the Viva brand paper towels which have no pattern in them or the computer paper and then a bowl of hot water in your spatula and that's about all you need one last thing I didn't mention this is a four inch cake and so is this one so I used the metal at eco scraper for the 5 inch or if I had a six inch cake I would need a larger scraper and this is a scraper and a side smoother made by fat daddy-o's that can easily do a six or seven inch cake and that's what I used on the larger tiers and those are also available on our website the last things you need are the dowel rods hmm these are the half inch Polly dowel rods those are really great for the bottom tiers when you get up to smaller tiers or if you're doing a smaller cake you can actually use the quarter inch these are a buttercream color and these are cut and put in the cake the exact same way and we'll be using these again later on when we add flowers to our cake I hope you've enjoyed the second part of the video on how to actually slice fill ice and construct a wedding cake use the same technique whether using a round cake a heart-shaped cake a square cake any configuration you want the technique is all the same in putting the cake together thanks for watching and remember everything is available at global sugar art comm have a great day you [Music]

Channel: Global Sugar Art

Views: 2,213,247

Keywords: Alan Tetreault, Global Sugar Art, baking, diy wedding cake, tiered cake, buttercream cake, buttercream tiered cake, buttercream wedding cake, Do It Yourself (Hobby), How to make your own wedding cake, make your own wedding cake, how to make your own wedding cake part 2, how to make your own wedding cake part 1, how to make your own wedding cake

Id: cpQ278VwwL4

Length: 27min 12sec (1632 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 23 2015