Mermaid Layer Cake with Vanilla Buttercream (2024)

FAQs

What's the difference between vanilla icing and vanilla buttercream? ›

The best way to distinguish frosting from buttercream is through the ingredients. While both contain powdered sugar, fat, flavouring and sometimes milk or water, frosting does not contain any butter whatsoever. Instead, frosting is usually made with shortening or cream cheese.

I recommend you use about 1.5 heaping cups of buttercream between each cake layer and reserve the last 3 cups for outside the cake. If you are going to add a filling such as raspberry cake filling, you'll use less frosting between the layers.

Both Swiss Meringue Buttercream and Italian Meringue Buttercream are commonly used by professional bakers, with Swiss meringue being slightly more popular. Both these buttercreams are made by whipping granulated sugar and egg whites into a meringue and then whipping butter into that meringue.

The most stable of the buttercreams, Italian buttercream is made from a meringue made bystreaming hot sugar syrup into egg whites as they're being whisked.

American Buttercream

This is the 'frosting' that seems to be used the most and is the simplest to make. Featuring butter, icing sugar and a splash of milk or cream for consistency, American buttercream is great for filling cakes, covering cakes and topping cupcakes.

You'll need about 3-4 cups of buttercream for a three-layer 6-inch cake, and 4-5 cups of buttercream for a three-layer 8-inch cake.

By easy, I mean easy: Poke your loaf cake or layer cake (with a skewer, cake tester, or toothpick), then use a pastry brush to coat it generously with simple syrup, which will soak into the crumb through the channels you just created. That's it: You've successfully completed a “cake soak.”

What to put in the middle of cake layers? ›

Fondant icing is a sugar paste and a classic choice for decorating cakes because it provides a smooth and professional look. There are three types of fondant: rolled fondant, marshmallow fondant, and poured fondant. They are all used for coating sponges and pastries but will provide slightly different results.

Yes, you can store buttercream at room temperature, but only for up to two days. So it's fine to leave out overnight, if you've made it ahead of time for a cake the next day. The high amount of fat in the butter, combined with a hefty amount of sugar, will keep the buttercream from spoiling quickly.

But generally speaking, you can prepare a cake with buttercream frosting up to three days beforehand. You can freeze the cake if you need to prepare it further in advance. Cakes with buttercream icing should be wrapped tightly in plastic wrap first, followed by aluminium foil, before freezing.

If you're searching for a more buttery taste, frosting is the way to go. Instead of using a sugar base like icing, frosting usually starts with butter, hence the name "buttercream." The thicker ingredients used to create frosting result in a thick and fluffy result.

Buttercream is also a little bit sweeter, so it may be the ideal supplement for a baked good that you want to be extra sugary like a cookie or brownie.

Preparation and Usage

Stir ready to spread icing, at room temperature, with a rounded knife To ice: Spread or pipe onto your cooled Betty Crocker? cake or cupcakes. To glaze: 1. Spread a very thin layer (about 1/3 of the tub) on top of the cooled cake 2.