Look ma, no crumbs!

For my last cake decorating class (in Wilton course one), we had to bring another iced cake to decorate. Since my previous cake took about twelve hours straight to get it to the stage where I could take it to class, I got smart this time and figured out my game plan in advance. I baked two cakes ahead of time and froze them, then pulled them out to defrost on the morning of the day I planned to work with them. That evening, I prepared the icing and chose a delicate cream colour. It was actually a combination of the Wilton gel colours in copper, lemon yellow, and pink. This was the icing before it was completely mixed:


Once the icing was ready and the jam-based cream filling was good to go, I unwrapped my defrosted cakes. I left this to the last minute to keep the cakes as moist as possible. I had it on a sheet of wax paper and that was double-wrapped with saran wrap:


After slicing both cakes in half, the bottom layer went on the cake board. I remembered to put a little icing on the board before placing the cake on (to prevent it from sliding) and almost forgot to use wax paper strips to protect the board:


I used the same jam-based cream filling (made with blackcurrant-pomegranate jam) as last time and this is what the cake looked like once it was fully torted:


And then it was time to cover the whole thing with icing. It was much more apparent with this cake that a crumbcoat was necessary to catch all the crumbs and prevent them from showing up in the finished cake. This was the cake after crumbcoating:


I put the cake in the fridge for about an hour and did the second layer of icing after. And voilà, no crumbs!