How to Make a Buttercream Cake

[Music Playing] Gwen Schoen: Hi I am Gwen Schoen food writer in Sacramento Bee and in the kitchen today is Belinda Gregor from Ettore’s European Bakery and Restaurant in Sacramento and Belinda welcome. Belinda Gregor: Thank you. Gwen Schoen: And Belinda is going to show us how to frost the cake with butter cream frosting. So you have already filled this? Belinda Gregor: Yes this is a pre-filled cake that I have ready to go which is basically I want to get the cake out of the pan, you are going to be cutting off the top layer so you do not have that little hump and that is going to help to achieve a nice flat even layer like you will see when order one of our cakes in our bakery. Gwen Schoen: Well, does that create crumbs? Belinda Gregor: It does grate crumbs but if you freeze your cake first and then tore it that is going to yield the much better result and also be easier for you to tore it. Most people think freezing dries out your cake but if you just take it and let it cool down first before you put it in a freezer, wrap it in plastic wrap and that is going to help keep it nice and soft. Gwen Schoen: Oh okay. Belinda Gregor: So then when you go to cut it off you do not have merely as many crumbs going on but it is kind of a double process once you cut it and then you are going to fill it and here we are have it filled with a white chocolate mousse and a layer of strawberry preserves and then it goes back into the freezer. So then here we have it already filled and you can see that is not fully even here. It is a little crooked here and a little funny on top so in order to fix that what I do is I just take the cake and put cover pull it off set the board very carefully and then put it back down and now we have -- Gwen Schoen: So that we have the flat side? Belinda Gregor: Yes. This is perfectly leveled now. So then you do not have to really adjust for the most part and then ones we have it here I am going to be trimming off just slightly to get it fully set on the side here. Gwen Schoen: And that just to even it up so it is really straight? Belinda Gregor: And it makes it much easier to ice into what you are doing. And then if you put plastic wrap down then you can then you can just lift the cake forward as and you do not get that mess all over your counter. And next we are going to get ready for butter cream and one thing that a lot of people have trouble with is how to butter cream a cake and not get the crumbs in there so what I find the easiest and most efficient for me when I am working on my cake at the bakery is to use a large plastic piping bag and this is a lot of people use this tips for doing basket weaves. That is pretty much a large basket weave tip. So if we just set it nicely in there and fold back part of your bag to keep your neck clean and then you kind to cradle it there so then when you go to larger butter cream and then working with a Swiss butter cream here that I have a lightly dyed pink. Gwen Schoen: Now could you use this technique within the other type of frosting too? Belinda Gregor: Stick with the butter creams for this. If you were try to do cream cheese frosting with this, it is not going to be very successful because cream cheese has a funny body to it. It is rather -- Gwen Schoen: This is pretty fluffy. Belinda Gregor: Yes. This is rather fluffy and it stays put but with our cream cheese is just going to pull against it self. So you do not want to stick with the butter creams on this. From here we are going to go around the cake, make sure the cake is centered and then just lay it on just like that. Gwen Schoen: This is sort of like a base coat. Belinda Gregor: It is pretty much the full coat really. There is no need for a crinkle when you do it this way because you are putting on a pretty nice thick amount and do not worry about thinking, this is too much butter cream going on to this cake because you are going to be scrapping it of to bring it down to a much more palatable level. So I want to get that all in there. Just run whatever you have left upon top. And you can