This may seem like a silly question to most but I'm still new at this. Cake boards are always bigger than the cake I bake, so am I supposed to use enough icing to fill the gap or do I cut the cake board to fit the cake? An eight inch cake board is larger than my eight inch cake. I have even watched tons of tutorials on youtube, but I still can't figure it out.

I love CC and all the help everyone gives. This site is a wonderful tool. Thank you to all of you who post.

I use that extra space as my guide for the icing. Load up the buttercream or ganache on the sides, take out a straight edge tool, line it up with the cake board, and smooth it out.

HTH

I just trim off the extra board around the cake when that happens, unless I'm going to be adding a border because the border will just cover up the extra board. You don't want to put too much buttercream onto the cake, especially if you are going to add fondant on top because that could cause problems with the fondant.