Ok. I'm thinking that I read somewhere that you can freeze a thin layer of buttercream and then make cutouts with it. Anybody try this? Any tips for success? I'd like to do an argyle pattern and I'm sure using buttercream would taste much better than using fondant.

Thanks for your help.

You can do a frozen butter cream transfer but I've never heard of a cutout.

I've not tried that but I have tried stenciling shapes in buttercream onto waxed paper then freezing it and it worked great!

edited to say: Thinking about the two...cut outs versus stenciling the shapes...I'd much rather stencil them. What about the area between the cutouts? would it be waste or would you be able to scrape it off and reuse it? eat it?

This seems like a great idea!!! Dag, I'm at work and can't leave. I want to try this.

When I put my buttercream in the fridge, it gets pretty hard, so it should get really hard in the freezer.

On the same subject, do any of you soften your buttercream in the microwave?

I don't

I soften buttercream in the microwave all the time. Makes mixing in a color SO much easier.

I soften mine with a blowtorch... I like fire

I have tried this....the cutouts are fragile, break easy, and have to be handled FAST from freezer to cake...just my experience. Fondant works so much better.

Yes, I use this method. It works very well on cupcakes using round or scalloped cutters. I've also used the method of free-hand cutouts for depth to characters.

This is something I would like to try. I see cupcakes all the time with fondant and I think they are beautiful, but just can't talk myself into to it. I just think that I want BC. Thanks for the idea. Let us know how it works.

I experimented with a tie-dye buttercream cutout... I was really pleased with the results.  If you are interested in how I did it, here's the blog post.

http://www.edgedesserts.com/2012/12/tie-dyed-buttercream-cutouts.html

I'm looking forward to experimenting with it a second time.  Next time, I would pipe my icing onto the wax paper so I could get thinner cutouts.  I also used a mixture of swiss and american buttercream.... I think this allowed it to freeze better, but I can't be certain.

I wouldn't mind trying this technique, too. But maybe it would be easier to make a super-thick buttercream (one thick enough to be molded by hand) and roll it out like fondant and make cutouts without freezing it. I say this because it seems to me that frozen buttercream might be too brittle to mold to the sides of a round cake, if that's what you need to do. Actually, I think I'll look for an excuse to try both of these out! Hope one of them works for you!