Let me premise this question by saying I'm very new to baking cakes. My question is-- is their a different icing used for crumb coating versus the final buttercream frosting coating. Also what is the consistency in thickness for the crumb coat. Should it be thin?

You certainly don't want the icing to be too thick for the crumbcoat. I use Indydebi's buttercream recipe and I use the same consistency for crumbcoating and icing but it's never thick.

Yup, the difference is mainly how thick the coating is. The idea of a crumbcoat is to catch the crumbs up in the icing and hold them so they don't show when you do the thicker final coat. Once I crumbcoat I let my cake settle for at least 3 hours so any filling that needs to sploosh out will do so and then I can smooth it down before icing with the final coating.

Cat

I haven,t crumb coated a cake in 15 yrs. After my classes, i read an articlel by famous cake decorator, that you are wasting your time crumb coating. Keep your spatula on top of icing, and never touch your cake with it. No crumbs. If you crumb coat , that is ok. I learned not to. If you put enough icing, and it moves good for you, (not too thick) then you don,t have to crumb coat.

Thank you all so much. I think that in my first cake the icing may have been too thick. I crumb coated first and then put the final icing on but the icing was kinda hard so I had to mix it again but in looking back I probably should have made the icing thinner. Plus I had problems smoothing the icing. I don't want to give up!!!!! Thanks so much for all of you guys input!!!!