Welcome to the Cake Decorators Q&A

Can buttercream or ganache or a combination of the two be used instead of the royal icing for stenciling? Also what should be the proportion of ganache to buttercream for stenciling or in general to strengthen the buttercream? Thanks so much for the quick responses.

Hello franke

Paul has a tutorial here on giving structure to butter cream:
http://www.cakeflix.com/using-buttercream-giving-buttercream-more-structure
Personally I don’t use ganache. I use melted chocolate cooled sufficiently so it doesn’t melt the butter cream. Beat the slightly cooled melted chocolate into the butter cream until well combined and fluffy. When you use it, it will set up harder than BC on it’s own but soft enough to have a lovely mouth feel.
This is something you will have to experiment with until you find a consistency which works best for you. Weather conditions will vary the amounts you use. In one quantity of buttercream 250 butter, 500g icing sugar, I use 100 grams of melted white chocolate, any make. I use ProGel by Sugarflair colours for colouring, only a tiny spot is needed.
If you want to use my quantites I recommend you make half batch to test suitability.