Frosting the Top of a Cake

Video Transcript

"Now, we're going to frost the top of the cake. Notice that I did the sides, and I have a a lot of frosting globbed up on the side here. That's what you want, you want a good lip of frosting coming up from the sides. And then again we're going to take a lot of frosting, a big amount like that, and spread it on. Now when you're frosting, you always want to frost on top of frosting. Don't go in a new spot, go on top of what you've already frosted. And then continue to push it, push the frosting around covering the whole cake. I'm using a back and forth motion, going edge to edge, edge to edge. And, that helps to push the frosting around the cake. And cover the whole cake, and then we'll smooth everything over. The most important thing is to cover the whole cake completely and then we can remove any excess frosting. If it's a little too thick, you can remove what you don't want. And this will help get a good shape, and you won't get crumbs in your frosting. O.k., now, the whole cake is frosted, I?m going to go around one more time, to smooth the edge and bring up that lip. Make sure your spatula is straight up and down, and just go around and smooth that edge. Don't worry about any messy frosting on the side here, we'll clean that up later. And smooth the edge. Now we have that lip and we want to straighten out the top, so clean your spatula off, and you want to do a sort of motion where you take a little bit from that lip that we built up and then gently spread it over. Then come of the cake like this, turn the cake around and work on another area like that. Now see how bringing that edge over gives you a nice crisp edge. Now you can use a spatula like this and that keeps the handle out of the way. A flat spatula like this when you want to sweep over the whole thing, might get in the way. So, if you use a spatula that's bent, like this, you can clear the edge of the cake and not have to worry about that handle getting in the way. Now after each time I take my swipe to clean up that lip, I clean the spatula off on the edge of the bowl, before I start the next side. And just keep going around like this, and see that makes a nice clean edge. A nice squared off edge, and we just sort of smooth it into the center of the cake. O.k., now we have a nice, smooth base cake and we're ready to decorate. Now, before we start our decorating we're just going to clean up any excess frosting that's on the plate. And you can just take a napkin, and sort of, a paper napkin and wrap your finger in it and just run your finger along coming as close to the cake as possible to wipe up any excess frosting. Then you fold it, don't keep going around with that frosting on there. Go get another clean area on the napkin and come around and just wipe off of the platter and excess frosting. Just to clean that up so we'll have a fresh start for decorating."