Sunday, July 7, 2013

How to Frost a Birthday Cake






Frosting a birthday cake requires a steady hand and a very special technique. Find out how to frost a birthday cake with help from a multifaceted and passionate chef in this free video clip.

Video Transcript

Hi, I'm Rachel King the Executive Pastry Chef of Enlightened Hospitality Restaurants here in San Diego. Today, I'm at our flagship restaurant Searsucker in downtown and I'd like to show you how to ice a birthday cake. So first we're going to start with a round birthday cake that has been chilled. It's important that it's been chilled because you want the filling so it's not wobbling everywhere when your icing it. We want to start with room temperature butter cream. It's important that the butter cream is room temperature so that it doesn't tear your cake and so that it smooths out easily. So we're going to use an offset spatula this is going to give you maximum control over icing your cake and we're going to start at the top. It's nice if you have a turning table if you don't you can just use a plate and we're going to slowly go around. Okay, so this is the caramel coat we're using, your going to do two coats is so that there's no crumbs on your outer layer. So now I'm going to go to the sides and we're going to start and just go all the way around the sides. Okay, if it's not perfect it's okay we're going to clean it up on the second coat. You just it to be a nice layer around to seal in all the moisture and all the crumbs. So now we want to smooth it out and then one last finishing touch before I finish off the crumb coat is I'm going to use a bench scraper and I'm going to turn the cake around and this is going to ensure that it's nice and even. We are going to chill this for a half hour and then we will finish off the cake. Okay, so we've chilled our cake for a half hour so the frosting is nice and firm and now we can add our final coat. We're going to repeat the process but this time we do want to pay a little bit more attention to how smooth it is because this is what's going to be presented to your guests. So we're startling at the top with a thin layer and again we're going to go through the outside. We have our sides the top is actually pretty smooth, but I'm going to smooth it out some more just so the edges are not over lapping and now we're going to finish off with the bench scrapper again and slowly just go around and one more time across the top. I would like to add some rosettes. We're going to put some butter cream in a piping bag. This piping bag is fitted with the star tip you can use what ever tip you'd like and we're just going to do little rosettes all around the cake. This also besides looking nice it gives you a little bit of forgiveness on the edges of your cake. So that if your not exactly perfect how you want them to be none will know. If you need to squeeze down your going to go like this and there you go. Thanks for joining me today. I am Rachel King here at Searsucker in San Diego. Thanks for watching how to ice a birthday cake.

No comments:

Post a Comment