Ice your cake in buttercream and get is as nice as you can. Then let the icing crust over for about 15 minutes. Then you can place a Viva papertowel on the cake and use your hand to smooth out any lines or imperfections. The "Search" feature isn't the best on this site, but if you go to it and type in "Viva" and tell it to search Topic titles, you'll get a handful of discussions about this with a lot of details!
Then let the icing crust over for about 15 minutes.
This part has many factors. It depends on your recipe, how thick you ice the cake and climate. Typically 5-10 minutes is enough for my recipe. But I've had to have the same recipe sit for over an hour before it crusted because I was very close to the ocean. Once I had to let it sit overnight.
It should be very "dry" before you out the paper towel on it. Test it. lay the paper towel on the cake. Swipe over it quickly and lift the paper towel. If it doesn't stick, it's ready. Don't trust it just because it looks dry. I fell for that... once!
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