[/b]Here's my question....I watch cake decorating tv shows and I always see them shaping cakes and they cut perfectly...my question is where are all the crumbs? Because when I do it I have a really hard time icing the cake because there are either crumbs everywhere or the icing takes huge chuncks out of the cake....what am i doing wrong...what should i do...Heellpp!!

You need to use a dense pound cake-type recipe for carving. As Shelly said, chill or partially freeze your cake before carving. Thin your icing with liquid for your crumb coat. That will prevent the icing from pulling on the cake.

I used to have that problem as well and I realized that I was not putting on enough icing and that the icing I was using was much too thick! Your spatula should never touch the actual cake, just icing!

Now I also do a crumb coat, a really thin coat of buttercream icing that dries before you actually ice. I still get a scattered crumb, but I just remove them with a toothpick!

Hope this helps somewhat!

Here's a trick I teach in sculpting classes- I prefer frozen cakes- just so- not hard solid. But by the time ppl get to class, their cakes are thawed... So just put your icing in an icing bag w/ coupler (no tip) and pipe it on there thick in strips- then when you go to use the spatula- just connect the lines and smooth- don't press in and don't touch the cake with it. It works best with a medium consistancy icing.

are you using boxed cake mix? they have a tendency to be very crumbly.