Crumb Coat

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A crumb coat is used as the base to get a smooth even surface for you to frost.

Having a smooth surface without any small crumbs makes your cake a much nicer and easier place to work on. It helps to avoid having crumbs everywhere on the cake and damaging the clean and white appearance of the frosting.

There are different methods recommended in what to use as a crumb coat. Some decorators use a thin layer of piping gel or apricot jelly to help secure the surface. If you choose to use the apricot preserves I suggest you warmed it slightly. You can also use this method to prepare a cake for fondant.

Another type of crumb coat is to use thinned frosting or buttercream. I always use  Dominican Frosting / Italian meringue or Buttercream to crumb coat. The suspiro/meringue does not stick well to the cake if you use gel, jelly or preserves as a crumb coat, so don't use these if you are going to frost the cake with meringue. When using suspiro, frost as soon as you finish crumb coating. For all other frosting, you could wait a few minutes or following day for to frost. I leave you with the following pictures of how I crumb coat and I hope that it will be of much help to you. 

Note: As you practice and acquire experience, this step could be omitted and only done when necessary. By placing a large amount of frosting, you can easily glide the spatula without touching the cake to prevent crumbs from sticking.

Steps: First use a pastry brush or fingers to brush off any loose crumbs on the cake. Then seal the surface of the cake with a thin layer of the crumb coating.

See No crumbs on Frosting!

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Cake Leveling

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Using a Serrated Knife

Place the cake on a cake board, and then place the board on a cake stand. While slowly rotating the cake stand, move the knife back and forth across the top of cake in a sawing motion to remove the crown. Try to keep the knife level as you cut

                                                                 
Using a Cake Leveler

Place the cake on a cake board. Position the ends of the feet on the large cake leveler into the notches at the desired height. With legs standing on the work surface, cut into the crusted edge using an easy sawing motion, then proceed by gently gliding wire through the cake. Torting is easy with this tool

Torting the Cake

Once your cake is baked, use a Cake Leveler or Serrated knife to cut off crowns and to torte into equal sections for filling.Follow the same directions as Leveling. To separate layers, carefully slide the top torted layer onto a Cake Circle. Repeat the process for each additional layer.

 Next Technique:
Crumb Coat for a Smooth Cake Finish

Carboard Circles for Cakes

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These circles are made of corrugated cardboard with the same shape of the cake. If you are going to cover the cake with fondant or need cardboard as a divider between levels of a tiered cake, you’ll need to cut the same size of the baking pan you made the cake in. If the
cake is going to be frosted with any type of icing and will have borders, then a 1 to 1 ½ inch allowance is needed all around.

The following pictures will give you an idea of how to do them yourselves. I prefer to make my cardboards two or three layers thick to give it more support and to allow me to use a decorative ribbon all around the edge. They can be covered with aluminum. Since I make many cakes for neighbors, I have made a few of ½ inch thick plywood in the sizes I most commonly use. It could also be covered with colorful decorative contact paper to match with the decorations of the cake.