Stacking a cake can be nerve-wracking but with the tips and tricks in this tutorial you'll be
able to assemble, frost and stack a two or three tier cake confidently!
The first step is of course to bake your cakes. I'm using my Perfect Chocolate Cake batter and
the recipe on www.britishgirlbakes.com has a table with the ingredients for different
sizes from 6 inch to 10 inch and two different heights, standard and tall. Leave your cakes in
the pans for 10 minutes to cool slightly and then turn them out onto wire racks and leave
them to cool completely, which takes about two hours then after they cool. I really recommend
chilling them and you'll see why in a moment. I've wrapped these eight inch cake layers in
plastic wrap and put them in the freezer for just 30 minutes or an hour in the fridge. This
is a cake drum and it's a thick cake board that can support the weight of a tier cake.
Starting with my eight inch layers I'm assembling the bottom tier of the cake first. Spread a dot of
buttercream onto the middle of the cake drum and then push the first layer of cake down onto it.
The dot of buttercream will act like glue to stop the cake from sliding around as you frost and to
decorate it. Spread or pipe your filling onto the first layer and you'll notice that these layers
are very firm because they're cold which means you can lift them and move them around without
them cracking or crumbling and it makes frosting them much quicker and easier and neater. As you
place each cake layer on the cake take your time to line it up above the layer beneath it so that
the sides of the cake are straight and it's not leaning. Cover the whole cake in a thin layer
of frosting called a crumb coat because it's meant to catch any crumbs that come off the
cake. I like to start with the top, spooning on a generous amount of buttercream and then spreading
it all over the top of the cake, pushing it out beyond the edges of the cake to prevent
a domed top later. Hold your offset spatula at a 45 degree angle and spin the cake to smooth
and level the frosting and the excess frosting will build up on your offset spatula until you
swipe it off and then scrape that frosting into a bowl. Use a new bowl so that you're not putting
this frosting into your main bowl of frosting since this frosting might have crumbs of cake in
it and you don't want to get those into the rest of your frosting that you're then going to use
for the final layer of frosting later. Move down to the sides of the cake and make sure that the
frosting sticks up above the top edge of the cake which is going to prevent a domed top and
also give you nice sharp angles from the sides of the cake up onto the top of the cake. Frosting
a cake is definitely easier to do when your cake layers are cold compared to room temperature cake
layers because cold cake layers are firm so the cake won't wobble when you apply pressure to it
while you're spreading on the frosting and also cold layers are much less crumbly so you won't
pull off any pieces of cake as you spread on your sticky frosting. This is my 4 Minute Buttercream
and the recipe is on www.britishgirlbakes.com and linked In the video description. Scrape around the
cake a few times with a straight edged cake comb or frosting smoother. The crumb coat doesn't have
to be perfectly smooth but make sure it gives the cake a neat outline with straight sides and
a level top and also, very important, make sure there's no exposed cake because you need this
layer of frosting to cover the whole cake so that it traps every crumb that might come off the cake.
Use your offset spatula to scrape the buildup of frosting from your cake comb and use it to fill in
any indents in the frosted cake where the frosting isn't as thick as on the rest of the cake. Scrape
around the cake again and for the top edge, push sideways with your offset spatula to take off the
excess frosting that's sticking up around the top edge, leaving a neat sharp angle behind. Put this
cake on its cake drum in the fridge while you assemble the other tiers. I share a new cake
decorating tutorial every week so if you're enjoying this one and you want to see more,
make sure you click that Subscribe button. For the next tier of this cake choose a cake board that's
the same size as the cake or as close to that size as possible. This is a six inch cake on a six
inch board. Attach the first layer with a dot of buttercream. Add your filling and then place the
next cake layer directly on top. This is a short six inch cake made with my Small Batch Chocolate
Cake recipe which is on www.britishgirlbakes.com and linked in the video description. You can see
that my cake layers aren't perfectly flat. Instead of levelling them which would take away from the
height of the cake I'm using my filling to create a level top before adding the next cake and
filling in any gaps with more buttercream. This is perfectly fine if you're going to chill your
cake until a few hours before serving it because when this buttercream gets cold it firms up and
will hold everything in place so you don't have to worry about drooping or bulging or leaning.
If you want to level your cake layers use a serrated knife like a bread knife to trim off
any domes so that the top of each cake layer is flat. Cover this cake in a crumb coat as
well. Put this cake in the fridge to chill and repeat the process with the rest of your cakes.
This little four inch cake will be the top tier of my three-tier cake and I've assembled it on a
cardboard cake board which I've trimmed to be the same size as the cake because I didn't have a cake
board as small as this cake. The board needs to be the same size as the cake so that it's invisible
by the time you've frosted and stacked the cake. To frost the cake it's easiest to use a larger
cake board as well with a non-slip mat and then place the cake on its little cake board on top
and then frost the cake. This way the frosting won't get all over your turntable because the
large cake board at the bottom will catch it all. It's also easier to move the cake around when it's
on a bigger board so that you have something to hold on to when you pick it up and put it
into the fridge. Okay, once the crumb coat has set which takes about 30 minutes in the fridge you can
spread on the final layer of frosting or pipe it on. Chilling the crumb coat makes it firm instead
of sticky so none of the crumb coat frosting will mix with this final layer of frosting, meaning
that the colours will stay separate instead of blending and also that any crumbs within the crumb
coat frosting won't get into this final layer of frosting so no crumbs will be visible on the final
decorated cake. I'm using my Facelift Frosting technique on this cake and the other two as well
and I have a separate tutorial on that technique and the link is in the video description.
When you finish each cake put it back into the fridge to chill and set the frosting. I don't
recommend adding any decorations yet like piped borders or texture or wafer paper or anything that
might get damaged when you stack the cakes later. It's best to add those details right at the end
when the cake is already tiered. Note that your cakes don't all have to be the same height. The
previous cake, the pink one, was about five inches tall but this one is only about three inches tall.
Sometimes it's nice to vary the heights of each cake and you'll see at the end that this design
is so dramatic and colourful that the different heights really add to the effect but for a more
traditional design you might choose to use the same height for each cake. The conversion table
for my Perfect Chocolate Cake recipe which is on www.britishgirlbakes.com has measurements
for both standard and tall cakes so whatever width your cakes are, 6 inch, 8 inch, 10 inch,
the heights will all be the same either standard or tall. It's fine if you can see the cake board
at the bottom of the cake. I'll show you how to cover that up during the stacking process.
I'm using lots of colours of buttercream for my cake but you might be using just one. However
many colours you're using it's important to save any leftovers for the stacking process.
Cover any bowls of buttercream with plastic wrap or if you're using piping bags you can leave the
leftovers in those, putting the whole bag into a tupperware to prevent the buttercream from drying
out or twist the end of the bag to keep it tight and wrap the piping tip with plastic wrap and that
will prevent the exposed buttercream from drying out and crusting. Take your time to make the top
edge of each cake neat because the edges are going to be very noticeable when the cake is stacked and
having a sharp angle from the sides onto the top of each cake makes the cake look much neater and
prettier than having a rounded top edge. I have a tutorial on 15 Frosting Mistakes You're Making and
How to Fix Them that can help with your frosting technique. Put all of your cakes in the fridge
for at least two hours before stacking them. At this point you should have the bottom tier on a
cake drum at least four inches wider than the cake and the top tiers on cake boards the same size as
those cakes. It's fine if the boards are visible for now. In part two of this tutorial I'll show
you how to stack these cakes to make a three-tier cake so make sure you watch that video next!