Welcome to the Cake Decorators Q&A

hi i really dont like useing buttercream to cover cakes because when i cut the cake to fill with jam then place the cut layers back together cover in buttercream then cover the cake with buttercream when smoothing the fondent i can see the lines where the cake has been cut and it looks bumpy and can buttercream be used for carved novelty cakes or would it fall apart i know im doing something wrong xxx

I always split my cakes into 3 parts, one for filling buttercream then the other jam so they don’t slide. I give all my cakes a crumb coat which fills in the gaps and ensures the cake is smooth. I don’t fridge them i leave my cakes overnight for the buttercream to firm up then apply sugarpaste. I love using ganache as it gives such an amazing finish but found all my customers wanted bc.

Hi annabel

Have a look at the ‘covering a square cake with butter cream’ tutorial in the free/beginners section, it will give you a good idea about quanities of butter cream to use in order to achieve  best results. Cakes filled with jam and butter cream have always been the norm for novelty cakes, however, ganache has become much more popular because it gives virtually flawless results, and tastes sooo much more luxurious than BC. Children’s novelty cakes can also be covered with ganache, just use milk chocolate rather than dark. If you want to continue with BC, the tutorial is the place to go.

hi annabel try a crumb coating  use some cake and buttercream   mix together into a paste

quite thick  fill the cut with the crumb coat refrigerate the cake until firm then cover cake with

a thin layer of buttercream  and ice

I always seem to have problems with bc too. I think I used far too much on my last cake (obviously had been using ganache too much recently and thought I could use bc to cover flaws in the cake the same way!), and when I put the sp on it became a sort of trapizium shape with sloped sides and bumps where the filling was! Think I need to watch the tutorial again – but how thick exactly are your crumb coats, and do you do another layer the next morning (and how thick is that one?!)?