Ok, I tried the upside down icing technique for the first time last night. I thought it was going really well, sides looked very smooth. Well, when I went to pull the paper off, it took off every bit of icing on the top!!! I think it's b/c I used wax paper instead of parchment. Is this what went wrong? Thanks.

Did you chill/freeze the cake before taking the paper off?
I often use waxed paper too, but I never have an issue if I freeze the cake for 30 minutes before flipping and pulling off the paper.

(Well, except once with this awful boxed buttercream requested by a friend for her B-day...but that was bad for lots of reasons...)

Yeah, it needs to be cold.

Hmm...I put it in the fridge, but I guess not for long enough. It was really late and I was in a hurry. Next time I'll use parchment paper and let it sit for a long time in the fridge. Thanks!

I had the same thing happen to me and I used parchment paper and I froze it for about 3 hours! Really frustrating and I gave up on that method!

i switched to taught saran wrap ( when i used to do this years ago) and it peeled off much mugh better.

I can't seem to get the saran wrap wrinkle free. I find that waxed paper works better than parchment because the parchment absorbs moisture from the icing and wrinkles. Waxed paper is more moisture resistant.

If the cake was cold enough, then it might have been the type of icing you were using. Perhaps its just not conducive to this technique.

All butter icing works GREAT in the fridge. Icing with shortening in it takes much longer in the fridge, and usually I pop it into the freezer. I always peel back a tiny corner to see if its ready before pulling of the whole thing.

Has anyone tried using freezer paper for this. The one side is really smooth and almost has a laminated look to it. Should make for an easy release.

Cake_Princess is right (she is Cake_Princess, after all....), freezer paper works best. I love this method and use it all the time. Freezer paper is thicker and parchment wrinkles too easily. Make sure that sucker is cold--I put mine in the freezer. Someone gave me good advice to do a thin layer first, get all the bubbles out, chill it then do a thicker layer, chill it and finally plop your cake on and get rolling with it.

Excuse me, girls. This topic caught my attention.

Upside down icing technique??? What is it and is it really nice? Does the icing stay on well?

Thanks,
Marie

Marie, looky here: http://www.cakecentral.com/article6-Upside-Down-Icing-Technique-for-Perfectly-Smooth-Icing.html

A smoooooooth cake top and sides, it's great Jeff is a genius

Thank you, Zamode! It appears to be quite a process. Maybe because I haven't tried it. But it looks like something fun to do.

Marie