Hi, I am new here and I have just started icing my 1st cake for Monday nights course 1 class. I need help/advise on icing my cake. I started the 1st coat which brought all kinds of crumbs with it. I waited a little bit and then done a 2nd coat of icing, but you can still see the crumbs. Any advise ladies? Thanks for reading! Lindsay
If you let the crumb coat (1st coat) dry then do the second coat you shouldn't have crumbs. I am not expert but it could be that your icing is not the right consistency. It may be too thick/thin and is pulling the crumbs with it when you are smoothing. Or you may not be using a thick enough layer of icing. I hope somebody else can help you more. Just keep practicing and you will improve!
The best thing I learned in course one was to use the cake icer tip. I LOVE it! I use it on every cake, and it basically eliminates crumbs and the need for a crumb coat. I buy 18" disposable plastic bags because I don't want to wreck a featherweight bag having a cut an opening as big as is needed for the icer tip. Plus, the 18" bag holds a lot of icing, so you don't have to stop and refill the bag very often while covering a cake. What I love about the tip is that it puts on just the right amount of icing so that you can skim some off in the smoothing process while still being left with a nice amount of icing on the final, smoothed cake (not too thick, not too thin). Because the tip never touches the cake, and neither does your spatula touch the cake while smoothing icing that's already on therefrom the tip, you have basically almost no crumb problem at all.
If you are refering to Wilton classes they will demonstrate how to ice a cake so you don't get crumbs in the finished icing 
It sounds like you didn't thin your icing enough for a crumb coat. It should not pull crumbs up; instead it should seal them down so they don't get into the finished icing coat.
Thanks for all the replies. I think what happen is that my icing was to thick. I should have thinned it down some more. I managed to get more on the cake and smooth it out. It looks ok, however it looks like I have a ton of icing on my cake.
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