When you cover a cake with colored buttercream everyone worries about how the guests will end up with dyed tongues.
Not only that, but a lot of certain food colors will make the icing bitter or just “off” tasting.
The best way to avoid a colored-icing overload is to cover the cake in a thick white crumbcoat or a white finishing coat, then apply a thin layer of the colored icing over it.
This cake is a good example of this, since I used a burgundy icing for the top section of the tiers and white underneath it.
This isn’t a difficult concept so I won’t do a step-by-step tutorial…just cover the cake in white, then when you do the final thin coat of icing use the colored icing.
Don’t make the icing too thin.
The only thing you need to watch out for is making the colored coat TOO thin, since that might pick up some of the white icing in it when you smooth it out.
If you refrigerate the cake after the first coat of white icing until it hardens up, it will be easier to cover the cake with the colored icing without smearing the white.
Return the cake to the fridge if the white icing starts to soften up, keep the surface hard while you’re adding the darker icing to it.
You can also use a piece of waxed paper or parchment to cover the white icing while you’re applying the darker buttercream to act as a mask for the white.
When I did this cake I used waxed paper to cover the white sections, iced the burgundy on, then added the black fondant sections to create the archways and hide the area where the colors touched.
That way I could easily cover up any uneven edges and make the design even all the way around.
