I'm still currently in Course 1 and we're doing the piping gel method, but I would like to try a fbct on a cake for my daughter's birthday in a few weeks. I read the tutorial, but still have a couple questions (sorry if they are stupid questions but I'm still very new to this) .

Do you thin the buttercream more than you would thin it to ice the cake? Also which tip do you use to fill in the color after outlining? Thanks for any help you can offer!

Stephanie ~ cake bakin' momma to 6 girls

Yes, I make my BC fairly thin, but not too much. Just slightly thinner than I use on the cake. I'm sorry, I don't know how to describe it.
I use tip 2 or maybe 3 if I have a fairly large area to fill it.
HTH

I usually use tip 5 to fill in a large area

Personally I wouldn't recommend using the already made Wilton black icing in a tube....I had bad experience with it..but everyone's different.

Don't worry...you'll be amazing how the FBCT all comes together. You'll love it!

I was very nervous with my first transfer but it went pretty smooth and was really fun! Just be sure to smooth your frosting before you freeze, otherwise you will get a "wormy" look to the image. You can see what I mean in my LarryBoy cake, he looks like he has intestines!

You'll love doing them! Good luck!

what do you mean by smooth the icing????

What I did to smooth mine...was covered it with wax paper and just went back and forth on it with a spatula...that gets the wormy effect out and also blends all together very nicely

After you get the icing all over the transfer, and you put your layer to cover the whole thing, first tip is don't make it too thick or it will stand high off of your cake, second tip, once you get that layer on there, kinda push down on the spatula as you smooth to get the lines out of the original, just don't pull the icing, or you may smear your image, do a trial run of a smaller image first, also the less detailed the better. I use 1,2,3 & 5 to fill in, just depends on how small the area is that I'm needing to fill in is. I use regular icing just like I do to ice my cake and just add cocoa to it to get a brown before adding black paste color to it, and it's fine.

Thanks everyone for all your help! I'm so glad I found this forum . I will probably do a practice one before I make the real cake, just to be sure I can get it right. You should see the pooh I tried last weekend with the piping gel, he was hideous, lol. I thought this may be easier because at least if I mess up I can do it over without messing up my cake.

And thanks for the hint on smoothing the icing, I definately don't want a wormy Hello Kitty, lol.

Stephanie ~ cake bakin' momma to 6 girls

I'm new at all the forums...don't understand all the shortened names..what is FBCT? sorry if this is really a stupid question!

There are no stupid questions....I think all of us wondered when we first found this site what some of the shortened names were.

Good luck with your transfer!

ok...bear with me...why would you want to use frozen butter cream what does the transfer part mean....again...I'm sorry for sounding not informed on this!!

Once you do them, You'll find several ways will work - there isn't just ONE way to do. For instance, I don't deal with worming AT ALL until it's on the cake, has thawn and crusted, then, when it's crusted, I use the High Density Foam roller and can get all worms out ina couple passes. To me, this is much safer than any other method, plus, if I DO need to do a touch up, then I can blend it in unnoticeably.

Second, I don't put a backing on my FBCT because it can make the amount of icing on my cake too much for my stomach to handle, but I do make sure every outline is overlapped somehow - and MOST important is to make sure your transfer is EVEN all across the back, otherwise, you get a hilly cake top when it thaws out!

I make them one of two ways too - I either make the ENTIRE cake top the transfer so that you can't see where the transfer is, or I make just the figure.

Examples of the whole top in my gallery are: peanuts gang, Mouse, Curious George, Elmo and "sort of" the firetruck as I made it big, just not the entire cake top. Pictures of my "image only" transfers are the backyardigans and Garfield. You can see on my backyardigans how THIN I can make them, but you have to be VERY careful to make sure EVERY OUTLINE is covered/overlapped somehow. I didn't overlap the outer outline of the Garfield cake and tahts' why the circle is a little messed up as I had to touch it up after it was all done.

Now I get it ... thanks so much. Cake Central website has helped me so much and everyone has been great!

Stephanie, here's a hello kitty transfer that I just did. I smoothed out my icing a little differently. I froze the transfer for about 30 min. then took my wooden fondant roller to roll all over it. This way the surface was firm and didn't stick to the roller, yet the inside was still soft enough to push the icing down and get rid of the worms.

coolchc21-That looks wonderful! I hope I can get mine to turn out as well.

Thanks again everyone for all your help!

I've never done a FBCT yet. Check out the thread about the chocolate transfers.......it sounds a little easier. Maybe you could practice both and decide which one you want to use.
Laura

that is very nice

I've never heard of a chocolate transfer, I'll have to look it up and maybe give it a try sometime. Thanks!

Stephanie, since you have a few weeks, I would recommend you do a couple of trial runs. My first one didn't turn out that great, but each time I do one, I learn from my mistakes.

Also, when I do mine, I make the whole top of the cake a transfer (suggested by another cc'er). This way you don't have any raised parts.