So I made a cake this weekend for family, and when I tried trimming it, it was waaaay tooo crumbly!! I froze the cake, but it was still crumbly that I lost the crispness of the edges!

Any suggestions of what I should do? Or is that normal? Is there a particular knife I should be using? I used a long bread knife..

What cake recipe did you use? Did you use straight box mix?

Yes I did, but I added an extra egg, more oil a box of pudding mix and sour cream (I read the recipe somewhere).

Is there a good fool-proof recipe that is dense enough to carve and sculpt?

This is one of the reasons why I do not freeze anymore. My cakes would come out to crumbly when I went to go trim. They also stayed tackey/wet. This would cause my icing not to stick, or slide off. Yes, I defrosted in the wrap on the counter, and then let it stay in room temp. for several hours. Regardless how long I let stay in wrap and then outside wrap, the cakes would always be sticky and to crumbly. I use the WASC on this site...

HTH

Are you using a nice sharp knife to trim?

Mikel, I never let my cakes sit "for hours" to thaw. Cakes only take a few minutes .... anywhere from 10 to 30, depending on size. I remove the wrap when they are still about 1/2 frozen. Soft on the outside, but nice and firm on the inside. No trimming problems. And I use straight cake mix plus one extra egg.

One time, due to scheduling issues, I took the cakes out the night before and when I came in the next day, I had the same situation as you ..... soft, sticky, yucky to work with. will never do that one again!

I use 1 extra egg, up oil to 1/2 cup, and 1 box of pudding to my mix and get a nice cake for sculpting. I don't use the sour cream. I would omit the sour cream next time. I don't freeze mine either. I just let it sit long enough to get cold and then carve with a sharp knife that is not serrated.

I carve when they're ROCK HARD frozen if I have time to get them that frozen. Also, you need to LOWER the amount of oil like was mentioned above.

If I KNOW I'm carving a cake I use 1/2 the oil that's usually called for in my recipe!