I cannot seem to get nice neat cornered edges on my square cakes. I attached my latest one to this posting in hopes that I could get some much needed advice! Not only cannot I not seem to get the corners nice and neat if you look closely in the picture, but I always seem to get a slight slope when it gets to the edge of the top of the corner of the cake. I put an arrow when the sloping is. I always watch when I am icing the top of the cake and whatnot but I am getting lost somewhere along the way!
Any help would be greatly appreciated!!

Thanks in advance!

you have to build up those corners at the top extra high with icing, so that when you take the excess off the top, it is nice and level.

use the stiffest icing you can handle


and i use a bench scraper to get the sides straight and the corners razor sharp


HTH!

What a beautiful bow!! I love the color too. I think that that issue is one that MOST decorators struggle with alot.
I'd follow Sharon's advice on this one, she manages to get the sharpest corners I've ever seen!!
You might want to get her DVD and give her method a try. www.sugaredproductions.com I think is the link.... I call them my icing bibles!!!

I do a lot of square cakes (16 out of 19 consecutive wedding cakes were square), so I got lots of practice.

Here's a thread where I posted step by step pics of doing square corners. The thread was in Sept, so it might have survived. If you can't get to it, let me know and I'll repost the pics.

http://www.cakecentral.com/cake-decorating-ftopicp-5396443-.html#5396443

And I totally agree with sugarshack .... a bench scraper is a have-to-have tool.

Thank you all so much for the advice.
I googled the bench scraper since I had no idea what it was. That thing looks like it would be good to use on the sides of round cakes too. Sometimes I find that my spatula is not tall enough and then when I try to use my taller spatula it is too flimsy (that or I press on it too hard), but the scraper would solve that issue too!

I was also able to get to the Sept thread with no problem! That technique makes so much sense!

I will definitely be putting all this to use on my next square cake! Thanks!

bench scraper .... round cakes .... oh yeah! It's great! Put that cake on a turntable, lay the scraper next to the cake ... give the table a big spin, and wa-lah! smooth cake!