Smooth buttercream frosting or ganache on cakes

There are various reasons why you might want a perfectly smooth frosting on a cake. Maybe you’re simply wanting a pristine, smooth cake surface for your cake decoration. Or perhaps you need an immaculately even base for a flawless Mirror Glaze. So today I’m sharing how I do it. Yes, I will be pulling out some speciality cake decorating equipment. But no, they aren’t essential. They just help to frost cakes faster. So don’t worry if you don’t have all the equipment listed – I provide alternatives that I used to use myself up until a few months ago!

What frosting to use

Both buttercream and chocolate ganache are suitable for this tutorial. For the buttercream frosting, you can use any flavour you want, as long as it has enough structure – ie. not too loose. Both my Chocolate Buttercream and Vanilla Buttercream recipes are suitable for this tutorial. (Note the Vanilla Buttercream is in the Vanilla Cake recipe).

What cake to use

You can use any cake you want. I’m using my Chocolate Cake with a dark chocolate ganache in this tutorial because it’s an elegant, classic combination. Especially once finished with a Mirror Glaze – which is why I want a smooth surface on this cake! And the, ummmm, “icing on the cake” (yeah I went there): The cake is a dead easy one-bowl miracle creation that’s intensely chocolatey, ultra-moist and has a long shelf life. My classic Vanilla Cake pictured below would also be ideal. Bonus: You are unlikely to need to level it because it comes out near perfectly flat!

Part 1: Frosting the cake

  1. Top with next layer then pipe ganache all around the sides, from the base right up to the top edge;
  2. Pipe ganache on surface in the same coil pattern, right to the very edge;
  3. Smooth roughly – use a small palette knife (or butter knife) to smooth it out but don’t bother trying to make it ultra smooth at this stage. We’re going to refrigerate it to make the ganache easier to work with to make it beautifully smooth 👍🏼
  4. Refrigerate for 1 hour to make the ganache firmer – this will make it much easier to make it smooth!

Part 2: Making it smooth!

KEY TIP: The easiest way to make the sides and surfaces smooth is when the buttercream or ganache is slightly on the firm side, cold out of the fridge. So if you handle it for too long and it starts getting soft again, just pop it back in the fridge briefly. The time it takes for the ganache or buttercream to get too soft to work with depends on how warm your kitchen is – it can be 10 minutes in winter to 3 minutes at the height of summer inside my house!

Part 3: Moving the frosted cake

Here’s how I move cakes neatly when I need to take extra care – using two palette or kitchen knives. The example shown below in the step photos and in the video is a Mirror Glaze Cake:

And there you have it. Now you have a beautiful cake with smooth frosting or chocolate ganache, ready to decorate as you wish! Oh – and I can’t sign off without giving you a little preview of that Mirror Glaze in action….

It seems strange to write a post without inserting a recipe, but there doesn’t seem to be much value in writing out the above steps in a recipe card. Perhaps I’m wrong. If you want me to abbreviate the steps in a recipe card – perhaps even with the photos – drop a message below and I’ll do it! – Nagi x

Life of Dozer

This is not one of his cuter habits (it’s a really windy, blustery cold day today and it’s blasting into the house!).