The Art of Frosting a Cake: A Step-by-Step Guide

The first step in frosting a cake is to prepare the ingredients. I've got 1 and 1/2 cups of sugar right here, and I know your impulse is going to be to stir, stir, stir. But don't do that! The more impurities you introduce into the sugar as you're cooking it, the more likely you are to get clumpy, funky stuff. Instead, just keep spinning the pan with a little bit of oil or butter in it, and let gravity do its work. This is where the beauty of a lazy Susan comes in – it's perfect for keeping the frosting from getting too agitated.

As I pop another layer on, you can see that the frosting will start to flatten itself out. Keep an eye on it as you're building the cake, and make sure to spin it all around so that it's evenly coated. Don't worry if it looks a little uneven – with practice, you'll get the hang of it. The key is to keep your spatula handy and be ready to press down where it needs pressing.

One of the most useful tools in my frosting arsenal is a bowl with a little spout. You can even use a pitcher or a measuring cup to pour the frosting onto the cake. This makes it easy to get the right amount on each layer, without having to worry about making too much or too little. And don't be afraid to experiment with different amounts – the perfect amount will vary depending on your personal preference.

Now that we have all three layers of cake and frosting, it's time to assemble the cake. I'm barely touching the cake at this point – just giving it a gentle nudge in the right direction. This is where air traffic control comes in handy – think of the cake as a plane, and you're guiding it safely onto its landing strip.

As we add the final layer of frosting, notice how it's starting to turn from sugar into caramel. The frosting itself is pretty fresh, but the cakes are even fresher, so there will be some movement when we bring them together. Don't stress too much about this – you can always put the cake back and start again if you need to.

When the frosting is almost fully melted and caramelized, it's time to add our final ingredient: a tablespoon of butter. This makes all the difference in terms of taste and texture – the butter adds glossiness and helps to balance out the sweetness of the sugar. And don't forget that tiny pinch of salt – just a pinch will wake up the flavors and bring everything together.

Now it's time to pour the caramel over the cake, making sure not to let it get too hot as we do so. I like to think of this process as painting with a big brush – you want to cover the entire surface, but also leave some room for creativity. Take your time, and don't be afraid to experiment with different drizzle patterns.

Finally, it's time to slice into our beautiful creation. Be reasonable about your slices – after all, you want to save some for yourself! And as you take that first bite, remember that this cake is like a work of art – each element has come together to create something truly special. So go ahead, indulge in the moment, and let out a little "wow" when you realize just how amazing it is.

The final result is one that will win any competition: a perfectly frosted cake with a delicate balance of flavors and textures. It's not easy, but with practice and patience, anyone can master the art of frosting a cake like this. So go ahead, give it a try – and remember to have fun along the way!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwe're putting together a cake something that actually does come up in competition is when someone who is a Savory Chef has to whip up a dessert and you kind of always want to go to Chocolate cuz it's so good right here I just have 14 oz of dark chocolate that I'm just melting over a makeshift double boiler which is just a pot with a little bit of simmering hot water underneath it you could do a mix by the way of milk and dark chocolate you can do this with all white chocolate so you can kind of decide how sweet or not sweet so that's part one of what we call a ganache a ganache is just a fancy French term for when you melt chocolate and you mix it with cream which is divine and you the result is basically a hot fudge that you could pour right over ice cream brownies you can also just use it as a makeshift glaze or frosting you can see that as it's melting I'm stirring it with a rubber spatula I'm making sure none of the chocolate cakes or scorches on the edges it's important you don't have to constantly Stir It But as you're melting it you definitely want to keep an eye on it this is two cups of heavy cream with a teaspoon of vanilla which I'm just going to add in there I don't know if you know this but vanilla was actually originally made to flavor chocolate it wasn't its own Flavor now we definitely want to mix cream and chocolate together in Optimum form and if you want a super glossy super smooth luscious ganache one of the big tricks I've learned is to have the cream and the chocolate actually be a similar temperature so they're almost friendlier and happier to meet up so once the chocolate is melted take it carefully off the heat we've got our little double boiler and then part two get that cream to a similar temperature so I'm just going to pour the water off my little double boiler so we don't dirty extra pots for efficiency I'm just going to take the chill off the cream and get it where it's jacuzzi plus jacuzzi it's not swimming pool jacuzzi you could also add a tiny pinch of cinnamon or a DOT of nutmeg or a DOT of pumpkin pie spice or a warm spice or even a pinch of cayen or paprika those are things I often do when I'm competing to just amplify the flavors cuz when the judges are eating it's that pop that extra little gice a qua that can make the difference right and then stir and I know you're thinking can I whisk you know what you can but you don't want to be too vigorous with this you actually want to combine it nice and gentle get a glossier smoother ganache and it's going to look at first like uhoh this isn't right right it's going to look all weird just keep stirring keep the faith can you see this changing starts out looking kind of weird funky and it just gets smoother and smoother looking now this is still pretty warm but you can see it's got a nice texture already very important when you're competing you want something with great results quickly right look at this I can pour it right on a cake okay so I have a ganache let's go that extra step right when I'm competing I'm thinking what can I do that's better than that better than what anybody else can do we can turn this into really a makeshift buttercream right and just so we have an idea in the beginning we're looking for like a a like a frosting right right now what we have is more like a glaze which is great we want to turn this into a quicky frosting two cups of sugar right in there we want to get the sugar into the warm ganache so that the sugar melts a little bit and dissolves the sugar will also help cool this right and then just to turn it into a little Quicky buttercream I'm going to pour that right into the mixer and we're going to whip it a little bit just to cool it and thicken it up Nice and Slow and Low take it easy so we're doing a bunch of stuff we're cooling it we're letting the sugar mix with the chocolate we're fluffing it this is and I'm just standing here now as it arates and whips it's going to get a little lighter in color right it's going to be a little less dark don't be alarmed The Taste is the same it's just air and fluffiness going in there as you whip and it cools pretty quickly right cuz there's a lot of fat in here it actually cools quickly quickly and you know when I have a lot of fat I don't know about you but I just add more fat this is one and 1/2 sticks of unsalted butter that I'm just slowly going to drop in here in bits why I do this bit by bit there's a lot of fat in here so whenever you mix cream and chocolate and all these rich ingredients together you got to give them a minute see how it's getting glossy you can even smell it it's funny because we don't really think of butter as acidic but it's got acidity to it and so does the chocolate so you're getting all these cool rich flavors and smells and this sort of vibrant acidity that makes anything sweet Divine we'll just let this whip a few more minutes right or you can even stop now once it's mixed in right fresh off the presses I could pour this right on a cake from here and then you can see it after it's cooled for another hour or so and you've got this multi-purpose we start with the ganache we finish with the buttercream either way you're crushing it and it's all homemade all right we're putting together a cake I've got two beautiful yellow cakes here we've got these beautiful edges but I always just when I'm layering a cake run a serrated knife over the top just even it out you see that so now I've got this straight edge as opposed to this puffed up Edge that way when we stack the layers right they're nice and flat and then you just cut in the middle keeping your arm and your hand flat you can even put your hand on top to keep it from moving or sliding and I've got my four layers you could also just Frost this as two layers right but you know four is more impressive now I have a chocolate frosting that I made that quickie buttercream I've got my cakes I'm going to pour a caramel over the top to make my childhood birthday cake and to do that I'm just going to make a dry caramel 1 and 1/2 cups of sugar straight in a pan and we're just going to to get that melting over medium heat we're going to keep an eye on that while we put this cake together we've got a lazy Susan you can do it on a plate if you don't have a lazy Susan right and we have that quickie buttercream that I Just Whipped up right you can see as this cools the buttercream will get more solid and thick and firm now we have that layer this is where I sawed away to flatten it so I'm going to put that down because the weight of the cake as I stack it will weigh down any rough edges you know notice how I'm not really spreading I just put a bunch of this frosting in the middle and I just flatten it a little and the reason is cuz if I Mix A Lot the crumbs are going to get mixed into the frosting then I'll take another again this is where I cut and this side the bottom is actually perfect right cuz it doesn't have any of that crummy Edge same principle not a lot of actual frosting goes on when you're frosting the cake let gravity do its work right cuz I'm going to pop another layer right and as I do that the frosting will flatten itself and as you're building this see that peeking out as you're building it keep your eye on it right keep it so that you spin it all around you press where it needs a little pressing that's what the beauty of a lazy Susan is you're lazy okay so remember I've got 1 and 1/2 cups of sugar in there I know your impulse is going to be to stir stir stir you don't actually want to stir and you don't actually want to use utensils too much to mix this cuz the more impurities go into the sugar as you're cooking the carabel the more likely you are to get that clumpy funky stuff you want a super clean pan and you want to just keep spinning it you can see it's starting to Clump and brown You' just got to keep your eye on it but don't stir it a lot another layer it's really useful by the way to have a bowl with a little spout you could even put this in a little pitcher or a measuring cup and pour it on there and then that last layer right on top you want a bottom to be on the top when you're done cuz that's the less crummy and then again I'm barely touching the cake I'm really just telling the frosting like air traffic control right just tell the planes where to land we can kind of give the cake a rest again you notice how I'm swirling notice how this is turning from sugar into just a straight caramel now the frosting we made is pretty fresh the cakes are pretty fresh so there's going to be some movement don't stress that so much cuz you can always put the cake back and then when we have enough on the sides just start spreading not fun now you're going to come down to the wire with this caramel and there's going to be a point where it's almost all fully melted and caramelized and you're going to say but Alex I need to stir and you you do get a clean spatula and that's when we want to add our tablespoon of butter why it's so good we're adding it for Taste glossiness and then you can stir I actually love and a rubber spatula for this obviously heat proof and now you see I'm off the heat by the way Heats off I don't need any more heat one tablespoon of butter makes a miracle tiny pinch of salt in here just a pinch just wakes all that Sugar up now this is hot let me tell you this there's not much hotter in a kitchen than sugar so you want somewhere to go to pour it out once you see it's good cuz even though I want to pour this in its liquid form over the cake I don't want it to be blazing hot I want to cool it you just want to make sure before you pour it off that there are no little clumps of sugar left and that's when using the side of the rubber spatula can be super useful get kind of thick with the butter and then and it's best if the cake has had a chance to chill and that frosting form a shell around it and then you just take this caramel and with wild abandon you just pour it and I know it feels funny to pour a hot caramel over a frosted cake or a warmish caramel anyway and you want to pour on the edges to let it create those special drips notice how little frosting we actually did we did more like spreading and pouring gravity will do a lot of this work for you and I know you're thinking Alex how much of that caramel are you going to put on there and the answer is all of it feel like Bob Ross you know just painting little trees and snow and grass soen and this will harden on top of the frosting and it'll form a shell and it makes this cake kind of like you know 2/3 cake and one3 kind of kitty candy bar look at that all around then you just have to decide where you're going to like sink your knife to get those Optimum slices tiny pinch salt to finish just a tiny bit there's a lot of sugar going on in here right with the caramel the frosting the cake itself just a tiny sprinkle and you'll see this is starting to firm up already just cut right in there I mean be reasonable about your slices you know whatever that is are you guys ready for the moment of truth I mean and then I mean all that's left to do is eat it and show off now let's just let's just look in inside here for a second shall we I mean this will win any competition forget it game over lights out and you did itwe're putting together a cake something that actually does come up in competition is when someone who is a Savory Chef has to whip up a dessert and you kind of always want to go to Chocolate cuz it's so good right here I just have 14 oz of dark chocolate that I'm just melting over a makeshift double boiler which is just a pot with a little bit of simmering hot water underneath it you could do a mix by the way of milk and dark chocolate you can do this with all white chocolate so you can kind of decide how sweet or not sweet so that's part one of what we call a ganache a ganache is just a fancy French term for when you melt chocolate and you mix it with cream which is divine and you the result is basically a hot fudge that you could pour right over ice cream brownies you can also just use it as a makeshift glaze or frosting you can see that as it's melting I'm stirring it with a rubber spatula I'm making sure none of the chocolate cakes or scorches on the edges it's important you don't have to constantly Stir It But as you're melting it you definitely want to keep an eye on it this is two cups of heavy cream with a teaspoon of vanilla which I'm just going to add in there I don't know if you know this but vanilla was actually originally made to flavor chocolate it wasn't its own Flavor now we definitely want to mix cream and chocolate together in Optimum form and if you want a super glossy super smooth luscious ganache one of the big tricks I've learned is to have the cream and the chocolate actually be a similar temperature so they're almost friendlier and happier to meet up so once the chocolate is melted take it carefully off the heat we've got our little double boiler and then part two get that cream to a similar temperature so I'm just going to pour the water off my little double boiler so we don't dirty extra pots for efficiency I'm just going to take the chill off the cream and get it where it's jacuzzi plus jacuzzi it's not swimming pool jacuzzi you could also add a tiny pinch of cinnamon or a DOT of nutmeg or a DOT of pumpkin pie spice or a warm spice or even a pinch of cayen or paprika those are things I often do when I'm competing to just amplify the flavors cuz when the judges are eating it's that pop that extra little gice a qua that can make the difference right and then stir and I know you're thinking can I whisk you know what you can but you don't want to be too vigorous with this you actually want to combine it nice and gentle get a glossier smoother ganache and it's going to look at first like uhoh this isn't right right it's going to look all weird just keep stirring keep the faith can you see this changing starts out looking kind of weird funky and it just gets smoother and smoother looking now this is still pretty warm but you can see it's got a nice texture already very important when you're competing you want something with great results quickly right look at this I can pour it right on a cake okay so I have a ganache let's go that extra step right when I'm competing I'm thinking what can I do that's better than that better than what anybody else can do we can turn this into really a makeshift buttercream right and just so we have an idea in the beginning we're looking for like a a like a frosting right right now what we have is more like a glaze which is great we want to turn this into a quicky frosting two cups of sugar right in there we want to get the sugar into the warm ganache so that the sugar melts a little bit and dissolves the sugar will also help cool this right and then just to turn it into a little Quicky buttercream I'm going to pour that right into the mixer and we're going to whip it a little bit just to cool it and thicken it up Nice and Slow and Low take it easy so we're doing a bunch of stuff we're cooling it we're letting the sugar mix with the chocolate we're fluffing it this is and I'm just standing here now as it arates and whips it's going to get a little lighter in color right it's going to be a little less dark don't be alarmed The Taste is the same it's just air and fluffiness going in there as you whip and it cools pretty quickly right cuz there's a lot of fat in here it actually cools quickly quickly and you know when I have a lot of fat I don't know about you but I just add more fat this is one and 1/2 sticks of unsalted butter that I'm just slowly going to drop in here in bits why I do this bit by bit there's a lot of fat in here so whenever you mix cream and chocolate and all these rich ingredients together you got to give them a minute see how it's getting glossy you can even smell it it's funny because we don't really think of butter as acidic but it's got acidity to it and so does the chocolate so you're getting all these cool rich flavors and smells and this sort of vibrant acidity that makes anything sweet Divine we'll just let this whip a few more minutes right or you can even stop now once it's mixed in right fresh off the presses I could pour this right on a cake from here and then you can see it after it's cooled for another hour or so and you've got this multi-purpose we start with the ganache we finish with the buttercream either way you're crushing it and it's all homemade all right we're putting together a cake I've got two beautiful yellow cakes here we've got these beautiful edges but I always just when I'm layering a cake run a serrated knife over the top just even it out you see that so now I've got this straight edge as opposed to this puffed up Edge that way when we stack the layers right they're nice and flat and then you just cut in the middle keeping your arm and your hand flat you can even put your hand on top to keep it from moving or sliding and I've got my four layers you could also just Frost this as two layers right but you know four is more impressive now I have a chocolate frosting that I made that quickie buttercream I've got my cakes I'm going to pour a caramel over the top to make my childhood birthday cake and to do that I'm just going to make a dry caramel 1 and 1/2 cups of sugar straight in a pan and we're just going to to get that melting over medium heat we're going to keep an eye on that while we put this cake together we've got a lazy Susan you can do it on a plate if you don't have a lazy Susan right and we have that quickie buttercream that I Just Whipped up right you can see as this cools the buttercream will get more solid and thick and firm now we have that layer this is where I sawed away to flatten it so I'm going to put that down because the weight of the cake as I stack it will weigh down any rough edges you know notice how I'm not really spreading I just put a bunch of this frosting in the middle and I just flatten it a little and the reason is cuz if I Mix A Lot the crumbs are going to get mixed into the frosting then I'll take another again this is where I cut and this side the bottom is actually perfect right cuz it doesn't have any of that crummy Edge same principle not a lot of actual frosting goes on when you're frosting the cake let gravity do its work right cuz I'm going to pop another layer right and as I do that the frosting will flatten itself and as you're building this see that peeking out as you're building it keep your eye on it right keep it so that you spin it all around you press where it needs a little pressing that's what the beauty of a lazy Susan is you're lazy okay so remember I've got 1 and 1/2 cups of sugar in there I know your impulse is going to be to stir stir stir you don't actually want to stir and you don't actually want to use utensils too much to mix this cuz the more impurities go into the sugar as you're cooking the carabel the more likely you are to get that clumpy funky stuff you want a super clean pan and you want to just keep spinning it you can see it's starting to Clump and brown You' just got to keep your eye on it but don't stir it a lot another layer it's really useful by the way to have a bowl with a little spout you could even put this in a little pitcher or a measuring cup and pour it on there and then that last layer right on top you want a bottom to be on the top when you're done cuz that's the less crummy and then again I'm barely touching the cake I'm really just telling the frosting like air traffic control right just tell the planes where to land we can kind of give the cake a rest again you notice how I'm swirling notice how this is turning from sugar into just a straight caramel now the frosting we made is pretty fresh the cakes are pretty fresh so there's going to be some movement don't stress that so much cuz you can always put the cake back and then when we have enough on the sides just start spreading not fun now you're going to come down to the wire with this caramel and there's going to be a point where it's almost all fully melted and caramelized and you're going to say but Alex I need to stir and you you do get a clean spatula and that's when we want to add our tablespoon of butter why it's so good we're adding it for Taste glossiness and then you can stir I actually love and a rubber spatula for this obviously heat proof and now you see I'm off the heat by the way Heats off I don't need any more heat one tablespoon of butter makes a miracle tiny pinch of salt in here just a pinch just wakes all that Sugar up now this is hot let me tell you this there's not much hotter in a kitchen than sugar so you want somewhere to go to pour it out once you see it's good cuz even though I want to pour this in its liquid form over the cake I don't want it to be blazing hot I want to cool it you just want to make sure before you pour it off that there are no little clumps of sugar left and that's when using the side of the rubber spatula can be super useful get kind of thick with the butter and then and it's best if the cake has had a chance to chill and that frosting form a shell around it and then you just take this caramel and with wild abandon you just pour it and I know it feels funny to pour a hot caramel over a frosted cake or a warmish caramel anyway and you want to pour on the edges to let it create those special drips notice how little frosting we actually did we did more like spreading and pouring gravity will do a lot of this work for you and I know you're thinking Alex how much of that caramel are you going to put on there and the answer is all of it feel like Bob Ross you know just painting little trees and snow and grass soen and this will harden on top of the frosting and it'll form a shell and it makes this cake kind of like you know 2/3 cake and one3 kind of kitty candy bar look at that all around then you just have to decide where you're going to like sink your knife to get those Optimum slices tiny pinch salt to finish just a tiny bit there's a lot of sugar going on in here right with the caramel the frosting the cake itself just a tiny sprinkle and you'll see this is starting to firm up already just cut right in there I mean be reasonable about your slices you know whatever that is are you guys ready for the moment of truth I mean and then I mean all that's left to do is eat it and show off now let's just let's just look in inside here for a second shall we I mean this will win any competition forget it game over lights out and you did it\n"