How Much Frosting Do I Need For A Three Layer Cake

Everyone knows the icing on the cake is the best role, but it can also exist one of the more challenging steps of the cake-making procedure. And it's not just the fancy swirls, bobs and swags yous encounter in bakeries. A slick, crumb-free frosting on a block or cupcake is an achievement in itself. This guide will help you get there and beyond.

Before You Get-go

Attempting to spread frosting onto warm cake layers is a recipe for sloppy disaster. Chill your cake layers for at least ii hours, or improve, overnight. If yous've fabricated your frosting ahead, make sure it'southward at room temperature earlier y'all start.
A big offset spatula and some parchment paper are small investments that will pay dividends. Yous'll also need a long, preferably serrated knife to trim the cake layers and cut them in half. If yous're a cupcake fan, selection up a small beginning spatula also.
If you dear baking (or at least, cake-making) consider buying a rotating cake turntable on a pedestal. While not essential, it does assistance achieve a satiny stop rapidly and easily. A block carrier volition help you lot transport your cake to the party.

Prepare Your Cake

You've baked your cake. You've let the layers cool. Just earlier yous can comprehend them with a luscious layer of frosting, you lot need to get your cake ready. Make certain the layers have cooled for a couple of hours after they come out of the oven, or even overnight in the refrigerator. When you lot're ready to frost, follow these steps.

How to Prepare a Block for Frosting

These steps below are specific to layer cakes, but y'all can use the basic information to get the virtually out of frosting pound cakes and bundt cakes, too (although y'all might consider glazing those, and we'll help you with that).

Cut three or four parchment or wax paper strips to place under the cake. Then, use a serrated knife to trim off any peaks from the tops of the cakes so they lie apartment and even. (Eat these trimmings every bit your reward for having baked the cake in the commencement place.)

Identify the paper strips on the edges of a serving plate and invert one cake layer onto it then cutting side is facing down; this helps minimize crumbs. Make sure the strips are tucked partially nether the cake to keep them from moving around, and partially sticking out to embrace the serving plate. The strips help go on yous continue from frosting the plate too as the block. Finally, brush away whatever loose crumbs using a pastry castor. But exist gentle – you don't desire to create more crumbs.

Haven't decided what cake you want to bake? We've got lots of ideas for you.

Karsten Moran for The New York Times

Tips

• If your layers are thick and you'd like to halve them to make a 4-layer cake, discover your longest serrated knife to do the job. It's hard to do this well, so accept your time. First, score a level horizontal line around the perimeter of the layer to guide yous as y'all cut. Then place one hand on superlative of the cake, and evenly cut the layer across the scored line. Apply less force per unit area and rely more on the dorsum-and-forth sawing movement of your knife to cutting the cake.

• If you lot're planning to bear your cake in a cake carrier, make sure the block plate fits within it. Or, ice the cake on a cardboard circular that'southward at to the lowest degree 1 to ii inches larger in diameter than your cake.

• If you want additional flavor or sugariness, castor a plain or flavored uncomplicated syrup onto top of each cake layer.

Frostings

When it comes to choosing the correct frosting for your block, your options range from a silky buttercream to a rich, bloodshot ganache. While there are no rules about matching frosting to cakes, bear in heed that sturdier cakes, like butter and pound cakes, tin stand to all frostings, whether a delicate buttercream or a heavy fudge. But for blusterous confections like sponge and chiffon cakes, stick to a lighter frosting, like a seven-minute meringue.

Buttercream & Cream Cheese

Buttercream Frosting

The unifying characteristic of all buttercream frostings, whether sweetened with sugar syrup or jam, is the liberal utilise of butter. These frostings go well with whatsoever kind of butter block, sponge cake, or fruit-filled cake, simply avoid using them on flourless cakes. Make sure all your ingredients are at room temperature earlier you start; if your frosting looks curdled, information technology's probably because they were either too warm or as well cold. Buttercream frosting tin can be made upwards to two weeks alee and stored in the refrigerator. Just make sure you bring it to room temperature before frosting your block.

Here's a foolproof method: In a metal bowl, combine 4 large egg whites with a pinch of table salt and i cup sugar. Set the basin over a pot with an inch of simmering water and whisk the mixture over low heat until the sugar dissolves. Remove the basin from the heat and beat with an electric mixture until stiff peaks form. Beat in 3 sticks softened unsalted butter, one spoonful at a fourth dimension, until the buttercream is smooth. And so, beat in whatever flavoring you'd like to use, like vanilla extract, lemon juice or brandy.

If the frosting (or your kitchen) seems too warm, stick the basin in the fridge for a few minutes, and so continue beating. If it's also cold, let the frosting warm up, then continue chirapsia until it comes together. This may take several minutes, and so don't give upwards.
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Cream Cheese Frosting

Cream cheese frosting has the same smoothen silky texture of buttercream, simply with an added tangy, sweet-tart flavor. It's a breeze to make and is the traditional frosting for carrot cakes, but consider it for anything from simple white layer cakes to devil'due south food and fudge cakes. Equally with buttercreams, make sure your ingredients are at room temperature. Foam cheese frosting can usually be made a week alee.

Hither'due south how you lot do it: Using an electrical mixer, trounce together 1 pound softened cream cheese with i stick softened unsalted butter until smoothen. Slowly beat in 6 cups confectioners' sugar until very smooth, about three minutes. Shell in 1/2 teaspoon common salt, and 2 teaspoons vanilla extract or one tablespoon lemon juice plus 1 teaspoon grated lemon zest. Thin the frosting with a little milk if it seems too thick to spread.

Fudge & Ganache

Fudge Frosting

Rich and dark, fudge frostings are like the soft and spreadable version of their eponymous processed. This frosting should be used very shortly after making, before it firms upward and becomes difficult to spread. If you must make it ahead, you'll need to reheat it, beating it until spreadable.

Here's how to make information technology: Finally chop half dozen ounces unsweetened chocolate. In a small saucepan over medium-depression heat, heat 1 1/2 loving cup sugar, 1 loving cup heavy cream or milk, and a compression of table salt until the carbohydrate dissolves. Cascade the hot sugar mixture into a basin and add the chopped chocolate, 1 stick of softened unsalted butter and 2 teaspoons vanilla extract or other flavoring (bourbon is nice). Stir until the chocolate has melted and the mixture is shine. Place the basin with the warm chocolate mixture into another larger bowl filled with water ice. Using an electric mixer, beat until thick and fudgy.
Ganache Frosting

Ganaches, fabricated from chocolate mixed with butter or foam, are smoother and silkier than fudge frostings, but merely equally rich. They can be made from bittersweet, milk or white chocolate. Utilise semisweet chocolate for a sweeter ganache, and bittersweet or actress-bittersweet chocolate for something less sugary. Ganache can ordinarily be fabricated a calendar week or two ahead. Store it in the refrigerator and bring information technology to room temperature while beating it once more before frosting your block.

Here's an easy, standard method for perfect ganache: Finely chop 12 ounces bittersweet chocolate and place information technology in a large, heatproof bowl. In a pocket-sized saucepan, heat ane 1/2 cups heavy foam with a pinch of salt until it comes to a simmer. Pour the hot cream over the chocolate. Allow the mixture sit for a minute, then stir until the chocolate is completely melted and the mixture is smooth. Stir in 4 tablespoons unsalted butter and i to 2 tablespoons flavoring, like vanilla, rum or espresso.

7-Minute Meringue

Beating eggs whites with sugar gives a sleeky, billowing meringue frosting that's a classic on coconut cakes and Lady Baltimore cakes. Seven-minute meringue frostings, also called Swiss meringues, are made in a double boiler over simmering water to dissolve the saccharide, using electric beaters to achieve the froth. Cakes with meringue frostings are best served the day they are frosted.

Here'south how you do it: in a metallic bowl, combine two egg whites, one 1/three cups carbohydrate, one/4 teaspoon foam of tartar and a pinch of salt. Shell with an electric mixer until well combined. Identify the bowl on top of a pot filled with an inch of simmering h2o. Over low heat, vanquish the egg mixture until it'south thick and fluffy, about 7 minutes. Mix in ane teaspoon vanilla extract. Make sure you frost your cake immediately, or the meringue will firm up and become impossible to utilize. And never store meringue frosting in the fridge; the humidity volition make it bead and weep.

Glazes

Karsten Moran for The New York Times

Made from confectioners' carbohydrate or chocolate, glazes are a subset of frostings. Instead of being applied with a spatula, glazes are thin enough to pour over the height. They will run down the cake's sides in attractive drips, and so harden as they set. It's useful to place your cake or cupcake on a rack instead of a plate to utilise the coat, so the glaze doesn't pool around the bottom. When the glaze has set, transfer the cake to a serving plate, using a large get-go spatula if you have one. Glazes are great for simple bundt cakes and pound cakes – really, any block in which you want to gild the lily.

Here's a simple glaze: in a large bowl, whisk together 2 cups confectioners' sugar with i/iv cup milk or cream and 1 teaspoon vanilla extract. Add more milk, a teaspoon at a time, until the desired consistency is reached. It should be thick yet pourable. You can substitute cold coffee, orangish juice or lemon juice for all or part of the milk.

Frost Your Cake

You've baked your cake layers, chilled them down, de-crumbed them and have them all gear up for frosting. Follow these steps for the neatest, most evenly frosted and best-looking cakes. A only and beautifully frosted cake needs no further decoration if you take the time to do it right – but rainbow sprinkles or chopped nuts hide a multitude of frosting sins, so don't fret if it's not perfect.

How to Frost a Cake

Brand sure the bottom cake layer is sitting on parchment strips to keep the cake plate make clean and frosting-free. Using an showtime spatula or a knife, spread the frosting your filling evenly on top of the bottom cake layer. Then, using a big first spatula if you have one, carefully pick up your 2nd layer and gently place information technology on the frosted layer, trimmed side down. If the layer isn't centered, use your easily to position it before you lot apply the frosting. Repeat if you've got more layers and filling.

Give your layers some other brush to remove any more stray crumbs, and and then prepare the crumb coat. This is a sparse blanket of frosting that seals the crumbs to the cake so they don't show through. Have about 1/2 cup of frosting and thin information technology out with a little milk or h2o and so it's very like shooting fish in a barrel to spread. With an get-go spatula, spread a thin layer of it on the tops and sides of the cake, then chill until set, about xv minutes. Repeat if you can still run into crumbs showing through the icing. Chocolate and dark cakes volition often need two crumb coats; white or yellow cakes are more than forgiving.

Now frost the block with the unthinned frosting using an offset spatula. Showtime with superlative of the cake, spreading the frosting all the way to the edge of the layer. And then, frost the sides. If the block is on a turntable, spin it around as yous frost for an even blanket. When you're done, remove the parchment paper strips and adore your prissy, make clean plate. But don't do this yet if yous are planning on piping any decorations on the sides or lesser of the cake. Read on for more details on how to do that.

Decorating

In that location's null wrong with a plain and uncomplicated frosted cake. But if y'all want to add some fancy swirls, roses, beat borders and other frippery, here'south how. We'll also evidence you how to write neatly on a block with a pastry pocketbook. Your birthday cakes have never looked better.

Decorating With a Spatula

For a basic wavy expect all over the block, utilize an get-go spatula or a knife and a back-and-forth motion to create swirls all over the frosting. This is 1 of the easiest means to add texture and a archetype diner cake look to your block. If y'all're using a fudge frosting or a meringue, you tin lift the spatula to pull upward some of the frosting and create spikes all over the surface of the cake. (This doesn't work as well with ganache or buttercream, though.) Y'all could also employ a fork to create striped patterns on the cake.

Karsten Moran for The New York Times

Decorating With Garnishes

To add texture to your cake, you lot could press chopped basics, coconut, mini chocolate chips, chocolate shavings or curls, or sprinkles into the sides or summit of the block. Sliced strawberries, whole raspberries, pomegranate seeds or other fruit expect dainty too, only don't add together them until just before serving or they will water down and possibly stain the frosting.

Karsten Moran for The New York Times

Decorating With a Pastry Bag

To pipe out letters, borders, flowers, dots and swirls, you'll need a pastry handbag, or a nil-top plastic purse approximation of one. (We'll tell yous how to do that.) Here's how to use it:

First, assemble the pastry bag. If using a disposable plastic bag, snip off the tip to create an opening. For whatsoever kind of pastry handbag, plastic or coated textile, insert a coupler down through the bag into the opening. Using a coupler, a plastic fitting that connects the purse to the tip, makes it easier to modify tips; otherwise, y'all'll take to remove the frosting from the bag to get to the tip. Then, screw the tip on to the coupler. You can also just insert the tip directly into bag if you don't have a coupler.

To load the frosting into the pocketbook, capsize the bag, tip downward, into a glass and fold the handbag over the sides. Using a spatula or large spoon, press the frosting down into the bag, getting it as far into the purse as possible. You'll want to avoid as many air bubbles as possible. One time yous've filled the bag – about halfway is all-time – twist the top shut and printing a little frosting out through the tip. Agree the pocketbook almost the tip with your dominant hand, and use your other hand to push the frosting out of the bag from the top, continuing to twist the bag pinnacle as you become. Now your bag is gear up for action.

If you lot don't take a pastry bag, you can as well use a zippo-top purse with the corner cutting off. Choose a heavy-duty bag that is easy to seal, and a gallon-sized purse is easier to handle for adults (if you're working with kids, though, choose a quart size.) Cut a very small-scale opening in one corner for writing, and a larger opening for other decorations. You tin can attach tips and couplers to a plastic bag likewise as you can with a pastry handbag.

Karsten Moran for The New York Times

To brand stars and borders, choose a star tip. Use a shine tip for writing, dots, and stripes. Cull the vanquish tip for leaves, shells, and borders. And for flowers? A flower tip, of grade. Before you commencement decorating your block, practice whatever you accept in mind on a plate. It's hard to neatly correct pipe gone wrong without refrosting the block.

To pipage flowers, fit your pastry handbag with a flower tip and fill handbag with frosting. Identify the bag straight up and downward, at a 90 degree angle from the block. Squeeze the handbag gently while simultaneously turning the bag slightly. Pull up slowly.

To pipe borders, fit your pastry bag with a star tip and fill the bag with frosting. Agree the pastry bag at a 45-degree angle, bear upon the tip to where you lot desire to start the border, then squeeze difficult while pulling the pocketbook straight up. Finish squeezing and bring the bag down most ane/2-inch away from where you started. Go along in that manner all the way around the top or bottom border of the cake.

Karsten Moran for The New York Times

Writing on a Cake

It'southward easier to write on summit of the cake in the eye before you lot pipe any borders or decorates on the pinnacle of the block. Information technology gives you lot more than room to work, and if you lot brand a mistake, information technology'due south still easy to re-frost the meridian of the cake and beginning again. Practice writing the message with frosting on a apartment surface before trying it on the cake. Make certain yous make at least ii kinds of frosting for your cake, or brand a light frosting and tint it for the frosting used as decoration.

To write on a cake, choose a pastry tip with a small hole. The smaller the hole, the more elegant the letters volition look. Using a toothpick, place a dot where you desire each letter of the words to go, spacing them equally. Then use the same toothpick to trace out the messages in the frosting. This is your guide. Pipage over the toothpick-lined letters, using firm, fifty-fifty pressure on the pastry bag. And remember: brief is better.

Frost a Cupcake

Although cupcakes are just small cakes, the technique for frosting them is different from large layer cakes. For one thing, if you lot've baked the cupcakes in paper liners, you won't have to deal with a crumb coat, and you can spread the frosting on with a knife or pipe information technology on with a pastry pocketbook. Nigh frostings and glazes work for cupcakes, but meringues can be challenging on such a pocket-size surface.

Frosting With a Pastry Pocketbook

Using a pastry purse or nada-height purse fitted with a star or manifestly tip, swirl your frosting on the cupcake, starting at the outer border of the block and moving toward the centre. Acme with sprinkles, chopped nuts, chocolate shavings or coconut flakes.

Karsten Moran for The New York Times

Frosting With a Knife

You lot can as well utilize a small-scale beginning spatula or butter knife to spread frosting on height of the cupcakes in an even layer. Wield the spatula or knife with a back-and-forth movement to create swirls all over the frosting, or elevator it up all over the frosting to create spikes. This works best with fudge and meringue frostings. Buttercreams and ganaches are commonly too soft.

Transporting and Storage

You've baked, frosted and decorated your gorgeous cake. Now how are you going to get information technology to the party without ruining it? Read on for some solutions.

Karsten Moran for The New York Times

A block carrier is a sound and not-too-steep investment. Make sure to frost the cake on a cake plate or cardboard round that fits inside the carrier. The plate or round should be at least an inch larger in diameter than the cake.

A big cardboard box is another option for carrying the cake. An upside down plastic tub container could also work if it'south big enough.

If your block plate or cardboard circular is smaller than the cake carrier or box you're using for transport, utilize stiff double sided record (or make a record band) to tape the plate or board to the bottom of the carrier. You lot don't desire information technology to slip and knock effectually.

If you're driving to an event with a block and tin can't find someone to hold the cake carrier in her lap (the safest place), the flooring of the motorcar is safer than the back seats. If you want to put the block in the torso, line the trunk with a nonslip mat or yoga mat so the cake carrier stays put and doesn't slide around.

You tin can buy cupcake carriers fabricated peculiarly for transporting cupcakes. Or, return the cupcakes to your cleaned out baking tin. Place a toothpick in each corner cupcake and lightly drape plastic wrap over the top.

E'er bring some leftover icing and other decorations to repair whatsoever frosting damage at the party.