Tips for Smoothing Buttercream on Sheet Cakes

[TasiaG]

I work at a Walmart supercenter bakery that only has one cake decorater and I’m in complete training no experience at all. I only been trained officially once and have been learning basically by myself. Recently I’ve been trying to ice flat sheet cakes and can’t seem to get them smooth. I use a quick icer and decopac scrapers but bubbles appear in the buttercream icing which we don’t make. And my corners always end up exposed with a hole causing crumbs. A side note is we decorate the cake the day of soo no time for crumb coats. Anyways I need all the tips and suggestion to at least get the base icing down.

* not my cake in the pic just in example of how the buttercream looks. No matter how many times I scraped the sides little spaces appeared.

 

[retired baker]

It might be over mixed, with that cake I'd dip my palette knife in hot water and give it a finish pass.
in the end its all about the coverup. Decoration is another word for concealing.

 

[Norcalbaker59]

I work at a Walmart supercenter bakery that only has one cake decorater and I’m in complete training no experience at all. I only been trained officially once and have been learning basically by myself. Recently I’ve been trying to ice flat sheet cakes and can’t seem to get them smooth. I use a quick icer and decopac scrapers but bubbles appear in the buttercream icing which we don’t make. And my corners always end up exposed with a hole causing crumbs. A side note is we decorate the cake the day of soo no time for crumb coats. Anyways I need all the tips and suggestion to at least get the base icing down.

* not my cake in the pic just in example of how the buttercream looks. No matter how many times I scraped the sides little spaces appeared.

Part of the problem is poor quality icing. In a home setting you could heat a offset spatula in boiling water, blot it with a towel and smooth over in the opposite direction. That wouldn’t get rid of all the holes but it would help smooth out most.

BUT, in a commercial restaurant/bakery you cannot towel dry dishes, knives, and utensils because towels hold bacteria. So blotting an offset spatula dry would not be allowed.