How to fondant ice a sponge wedding cake
How to buttercream a sponge cake ready for covering with sugarpaste/fondant icing
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hi I'm Lynne and I'm a cake decorator
and tutor from West Wales the name of my
company's linens cake creations I've got
a little bit of spare time on my hands
at the moment so I thought it would be
an opportunity for me to put a couple of
videos together to show those of you
who'd like to start cake decorating that
their techniques in covering a cake with
buttercream and then sugar paste and
then doing simple cutout decorations and
possibly some unwired sugar flowers to
put on an alternative cake I'm going to
split the videos into four so that you
can work through each one and the first
one would be buttercream in sponge cake
ready for sugar paste in the second
we'll be covering the cake with sugar
paste the third will be doing simple
cutouts and the fourth will be doing
simple and wild flowers in producing the
videos I've tried to use equipment and
materials that you would have in the
house so you don't have to actually go
out and buy lots of different things but
I will give you advice as to equipment
and materials that you can purchase if
you want to okay I look forward to
starting it and I will see you in the
next episode which will be buttercream
in a sugar paste cake
hello once again now I'm going to start
to show you how to better cream a cake
I'm going to tilt my iPad down so you
can see the equipment that I've got laid
out and then I'm just gonna talk you
through and show you the procedure that
I use or that technique I use for butter
cream in a sponge cake okay as you can
see here I've got a variety of equipment
most of them I've got from you was in
the house I've got my palette knives
I've got a spatula and a few sharp
knives I've also got some side scrapers
you may you don't have to use these but
they are can be of help these are some
I've had for years I've had this since I
was about 20 odd so it's very old these
I brought along the way you can get the
stainless steel ones that afirma I tend
to use these when I'm doing my
professional cakes because I find
they're firmer and they work better I'm
just gonna move all of these just out of
the way so you don't have to see them
again whenever when I'm using them then
I have when I'm doing a round cake I
will use a turntable now then I've got a
flat little turntable which is quite
quite useful to use something you may
have in the house maybe something like
this that you've had with them with some
cookery equipment I've had a few that
I've had as service so you anything that
you can find that rotates may make the
job a little bit easier for you okay
so those are two I've got there then we
come to the cake and what we've got to
put it on now again for my professional
cakes I do use the cake drum these are
readily available from supermarkets this
is a 10-inch because I'm going to be
covering a 7-inch cake as I say you can
get them from supermarkets if you don't
want to get one of these you could
always use a tray that you've covered
with a bit of folio
the next is my sponge and I've got three
layers for this this sponge because
nowadays people seem to like they do per
cakes so I tend to do three layers of
mismanage cake this is a 7-inch and I've
used for a four egg Victoria sponge
recipe for the three layers so with my
recipes I just used a basic all-in-one
sponge cake so for every two eggs
well not for every one egg I use two
ounces of soft matter in two ounces of
self-raising flour and 2 ounces of
castor sugar now for that quantity I
also use half a teaspoon of baking
powder so for this cake
I've used four eggs which weights to
eight ounces of caster sugar 8 ounces of
soft margarine 8 ounces of self-raising
flour and 2 teaspoons of baking powder I
cook it in a at the oven at 160 degrees
that's a fan oven and I cook it for
about 25 minutes you know it's ready
when it's when you open the doors and
you just slightly touch the surface of
the sponge it just springs back so to
prepare the sponges I've already leveled
two of these but quite a good tip is if
you use the cake tin that you've
actually cooked the cake in to get it
level just you might find you have to
put something in underneath just to
increase the size I've just put a couple
of cake cards in this again you should
have something in the house that you can
just put into their crops even it's a TT
saucer or a placed or something that's
quite narrow or a lid off a Tupperware
container so then I pop my cake into the
the tin I only use my largest knife and
you can just run the knife along
the edge of the 10 and that would level
your cake off so anyone to take away the
extra cake which I'm sure somebody in
the house will enjoy and then you want
to just pop a cake out of the table okay
so that now is a nice flat level surface
just clear the crumbs away at this when
your buttercream and you're always gonna
find your health and I have a little bit
of a mess with the crumbs around and
about so I've got the cake cut just pop
it on the board a minute so you can see
that there the other thing was we need
to do or to have for the buttercream for
the buttercream Ian is obviously some
ice cream and I also like to have some
Jam just to give a nice bit of flavor in
in the sponge you can flavor your
buttercream with any sort of flavor and
you want there's so many flavorings you
can get on the market if you're doing a
traditional vanilla sponge it's quite
nice to put a little drop few drops of
vanilla extract in there I traditionally
I'll use strawberry jam in my my sponges
quite often people like to use raspberry
jam
it's the preference and what you put in
there is up to you
you don't even need to put jamming if
you don't want to but the cream recipe I
use half quantities are better to icing
sugar so if I use 8 ounces a better I
lose a pound of icing sugar and I mix
soften the better to start with then I
add 8 ounces of the icing sugar or half
of the icing sugar beat that with your
hand mixer or your your larger mixer
until it's nice and soft and creamy then
add the remain in icing sugar and beat
that up again if you find this a little
bit stiff you can always add a little
bit of cold boiled water we're not
called a boiled water to it and that
soften it but in the temperature that
we've got at the moment you'll find that
the the buttercream is soft enough I
always use better because it firms that
much better if you use soft margarine or
butter alternatives they stand to stay
very soft so it doesn't give you such a
nice surface to work on so I'd always
advise use butter we're going to pop it
in the fridge for a little while I'm the
butter firms up a lot so you're able to
get a better cover with your sugar paste
so I'm going to continue now to layer up
the sponge so I've got my three layers
because I've got three layers I'm going
to start with the upper side of the
sponge sitting on the board okay and I'm
just going to centralize that and my
palette knife add some buttercream to be
to the sponge so I've added it in one
dollop now what I do is I used my pallet
knife and I just work the buttercream
around trying not to lift my pallet
knife off the surface of the cake
because if you do that you can move the
crumbs about a little bit and then you
can work with with a turntable but you
can see I am working without and it
still works but I actually prefer to
just have the turntable underneath
because it gives me a little bit more
control so I'm turning it
so what I'm going to do next is I'm
going to apply some strawberry jam to
the upper side of the sponge for the
next layer
I'll actually put it on both of them
ready
on again the amount of buttercream we
put on up not buttercream Jam you put on
is up to you you know some people like
lots others prefer less I don't tend to
put too much because it can slip about a
bit on on the buttercream those decide
so you can see I'm working on this now
what I'm going to do is I'm just going
to pop the next one on top of there and
just put a bit of pressure down just to
firm it all up a little bit
I never remove my baking parchment from
my cakes until I'm ready to decorate
because it seems to keep them a little
the cakes a little bit moister so back
now put some buttercream
on this layer and again the amount of
buttercream you put on is your
preference if you like a lot about a
cream put more in
okay so again I haven't lifted my knife
up off the surface so it's reducing the
amount of crumb that a victim off the
sponge I got my next layer which is
gonna go on top again when I'm doing it
I'm just looking down just to make sure
that they're all reasonably even so they
sit in one on top of the other again a
bit of pressure down so it makes it nice
and level so I've got a little bit of
crumbs around here so I'm just going to
remove those
I just take them away
Hammond's well now what we need to do is
we want to cover the whole of the cake
with buttercream I start by applying the
buttercream to the top of the cake and
again the same method as I've done
before just moving the buttercream about
trying not to lift my palate life off
the surface okay so you can see the
buttercream has come into the edge of
the cake and I want it to do that
because I'm going to encourage that to
go down so I'm just going to rotate
around
to get a reasonably smooth surface so
what I'm going to do next now is I'm
going to put some buttercream on the
side and then try not to lift the palate
knife off and just working backwards and
forwards and that's going to bring in
that buttercream from the top as well no
magic around you may find you don't need
to put any more on to start with but I'm
just keeping pressure on all the time so
as I'm want to avoid getting any crumbs
in this if at all possible you don't
need to worry too much because obviously
this is going to be covered with sugar
paste but these days a popular
alternative is just having the cake
covered with butter cream and no sugar
paste now if I was to do that I would
give this a thinner layer of buttercream
to start with let it chill off in the
fridge and then I'd come back and put
another layer of buttercream on the top
so that's something perhaps I can show
in another video so you can see now how
all of the cake surface is covered there
is some crumb about but not too much and
you can see that the buttercream is
quite firm and it's sticking quite
nicely to the side of the cake
commit and this is when I used my side
straighter let's say I lose this one so
you can see how it works and I just hold
my side scraper there and I twist around
the side of the cake just to try and get
a nice even surface well a straight
surface more than even so I'm not
removing much of the ice in there's a
few air bubbles there but you don't need
to worry about those
okay so I've gone around and what you
want to do with the top surface of the
cake then there's I'll use a clean
palette knife for this just show you
right just pull it in to the center so
you're not losing that mice edge and I'm
doing a little bit at a time and every
time I take off I clean my knife off all
the way around that's covered then take
away any spare buttercream that's on the
board itself so that's all cleared away
and you can wipe the boards down as well
so that's done I will now just show you
how you can do it without choosing the
turntable because I appreciate a lot of
you may not have have one available so
what to do again perhaps you've got to
do this in sections now so you just use
that come around so far
once you've done that go around come
around again and again and by doing that
you can see you you're smoothing the
cake surface down
and that is your cake already
to be sugar paste it but what we need to
do first is we need to pop it in the
fridge for half an hour possibly an hour
so that the butter crisps up firms up so
as I say it gives you that much firmer
surface to work on when the sugar paste
in any thanks this is going in the
fridge I'm going to clear up and then
we'll get things ready for the next
stage speak to you soon
Related queries:
how to ice a sponge wedding cake
