How I fill and stack a cake.

by Yvette van Niekerk

I have had such a fiasco with filling and stacking cakes, I thought I would share some of my own experiences with you today. My cakes have bulged out between layers and are straight up oozing off the sides. An expensive lesson especially when I am baking for my clients.

What was my problem? I realized now after a lot of tears and frustration, that many times I didn’t put enough icing on and the cake was just cumber covered. I also came to the realization that I didn’t build a wall on my cake when placing a filling inside of the cake.

I soon realized the essential part of building your cake starts with the basics, your icing needs to be thick enough so that your foundation is sturdy. I have baked cakes and on delivery, my cakes started pulling to the left and going lopsided.

Now I have been baking for over a decade and it has been an experience. There are two kinds of fillings and a trick to stacking a cake. One is the stable filling which is straightforward buttercream icing and the other less stable fillings are like soft consistency chocolate ganache, salted caramel, jam, lemon cured etc.  

I am going to demonstrate a stable filling today and next time we will explore the filling of ganache or chocolate.

Starting point.

I go straight to my board and place a dash of buttercream on the surface of the board before I place my first layer of cake on said board. This swipe of buttercream acts as “glue” to keep my bottom layer in place. Using this cake board method I find makes life a lot easier to place my cake on my turntable and then straight into the box for transportation.

Filling and stacking my cake with buttercream icing.

I find filling and stacking my cake with buttercream icing, it’s very straightforward. I know that consistency is very important and will share my vanilla buttercream icing recipe with you. In South Africa we have a different kinds of margarine and butter, I find that you should stick to the margarine or butter specifically made for baking. When I first started baking I never realized that the consistency of the margarine affects the wall of your cake. To thicken the buttercream I normally add more powdered sugar. I find the thicker the icing consistency the better the cake.

I take some of my icing mixtures and place them in a piping bag, then I pip the icing on the base of my cake. I then place the icing on top and start the covering of the first layer, here you can decide the thickness of the icing for the cake. I like it about 1 cm for the filling. I then place my next layer on the cake and do the same.

I have learned through hard experience that I need to ensure my first layer of icing is as level as possible, otherwise, my cake isn’t as even as I want it to be.

Stacking cake layers

As mentioned above it's important to place a dash of icing on the bottom of the cake board to secure the first layer of your cake. I then proceed to place my cake on my board. I don’t cake anything off my cakes, as you can see they are straight and no bulging on the top of the cake. I place my icing over the top and then the next layer and carry it onto the next layer.

I find that it is important to first put crumb protection covering my cake and I place my cake in the fridge for 20 minutes allowing my cake to cool. I then start with the base cover with plain white buttercream icing and then I pipe my colors for the finale stage.

I use a scraper to level my cake out and then I start with decoration. On this cake, I printed Masha and Bear on rice paper placing it on a biscuit for a nice touch. I then sprinkled some sprinkles on the cake.