If anyone has done stenciling on the side of a cake, can you give me some pointers. I have bought my first stencil to use on wedding cake in two weeks but am a little gun shy!! Thanks in advance.

Hi, u-tube has some helpful videos.

i have kind of the same question, maybe, could you take a say a battunburg lace and cut it out and use as a stencil or for the pattern to follow,

I'm going to try one in two days (Saturday), so I hope someone jumps in here. I am doing all buttercream and lots of people have said that won't work. Use fondant, use royal ... I'm using buttercream. I did a test and let my buttercream crust, then stenciled on top of it. Actually ... I may be able to find the pictures. This was a ROUGH test and these aren't the colors I will use (although the cake will be pink), but the buttercream stencil seemed to work fine ... IMO.

In the meantime, I'll hang out here and see if I get some good advice. I will be filling and crum bcoating tomorrow - icing and decorating Saturday. Saturday pm wedding. The wedding is outside and it's supposed to be in the 90's, so I'm using indydebi's buttercream recipe.

I did it on this cake. You have to let the icing crust REALLY WELL. Mine crusted overnight and I had no problems at all. I just held the stencil on there and applied the purple with my pampered chef stoneware scraper.

That is beautiful, jammjenks. Did your stencil come from Culinary Stencils? It is really pretty. I've been trying to decide which ones to buy ... I really like yours.

I was trying to figure out what to spread the icing with because the tool used in the video seems flexible. I cut the corner out of one of my flexible cutting boards and it worked great. My cake will be pink with darker pink stencils, so it won't have to be quite as perfect as yours turned out!

Thanks Martha. Actually, I bought mine at Hobby Lobby. It is a stencil that you would use to paint on a wall. It is made of plastic similar to my diamond impression mats and such.

I've wondered why I couldn't use a "regular" stencil on my cakes. I've read that it has to be food safe, but that probably comes from Culinary Stencils. They even say that only their culinary stencils are safe to use on food and not their other products. No longer than the stencil touches the cake, I can't imagine that it wouldn't be okay but I haven't tried it yet. You have, so now I will!

Thanks, April.

Well, it's made out of the same type plastic as my impression mats. I washed it first, so we're good. I ain't skeered....

Hi all anyone try lace to trace after you take it off

In my pics, the hatbox on top of the suitcase is done with a regular stencil from Michaels. It worked great. Only pointer I can give (cause Im no means an expert lol!) is to practice with it until you get comfortable with lifting it off. I had one spot that kind of smeared but I think it was the user not the stencil!!!

I have done a few, only have one wedding cake in my pictures with it. It is white on white. It is really pretty easy, I was a little gun shy too but it wasn't as hard as I thought. I did use royal icing, haven't tried with bc. Just hold it very still and peel it off slow.

Shelly, that cake is beautiful. I have thought about using the same icing for the stencil as I am using for the cake. I wasn't sure if it would stand out enough, but your cake is lovely. Of course you used royal, so it was two different textures. Did you do anything else to it (pearl dust, etc)?

Maybe I'll have time to do a quick experiment tonight!

The box part is MMF and the top is a fondant/gumpaste 50/50.

Thanks. I will be doing buttercream on buttercream ... hope it works.

Hi all, after my class at Michaels, i looked around and found this tub of foam letter's and numbers, and a ton of shapes, the letter's were in two different types, there was so much in it i tried to put them back in and i don't know how they got them in there but i couldn't i was thinking when i make a birthday cake i could just lightly touch the cake with them, oh and i bought one with butterflies,fireflies and lady bugs. what do you think. they have a paper on the back because they stick.

I don't know why that wouldn't work, ninatat. Give it a try and let us know how it turns out.

I also have stenciled buttercream on buttercream. It works very well. Ice your cake and it helps to stick it in the refridgerator for a little while to make it good and firm. When I stenciled, the base icing was a light tan and the icing I stenciled with was just a little darker. I was very happy with how the cakes turned out. One suggestion I would have is to wipe your stencil off after you pull it off the cake, before you stencil the next area. It might help prevent smearing.

Good luck and have fun!

Jean

Thanks, Jean. My bottom tier is a 16" square and it is on a 19" piece of glass - too big to fit in my refrigerator. I have all three tiers sitting in a closed room with the a/c on COLD, but they still won't be as cold as in the fridge. I'm planning to use a shade of pink a little darker than my cake. Hopefully I will be posting pictures tomorrow ... if it turns out like it is supposed to.

I did stencil buttercream on buttercream. It smeared a little, but came out pretty good for my first try. Your buttercream has to be really crusted. I have done melted chocolate on fondant and it works great because the chocolate sets up so fast. I haven't tried it on buttercream, but it probably should work.

Melted chocolate ... what a great idea, msulli10! I would love some more details on the procedure if you don't mind. Was the chocolate fairly cool before you used it? What kind of chocolate did you use? I wonder if that matters ...

I'm picturing pulling the stencil away and having chocolate in places that I don't want it to be. This would definitely require a trial run or two or three.

Thanks!

mbt4955 - I actually just melted some chocolate chips in the microwave - 20 second intervals and kept stirring until smooth. I let it cool a little. It worked great on fondant. I have a photo of a graduation cake in my pics with the stencil on it. There is a tutorial on this website. Go to the home page and just scroll down a bit and you will find it. I think it's called Making a Chocolate ribbon.

the video on this site is also showing the lady stenciling a buttercream cake with buttercream.. she talks about the little trowel she uses.. hth

I used regular stencil I bought at Michael's. I washed it thoroughly before using. It wasn't as easy as I thought. Some of the icing got underneath the stencil. I did buttercream on buttercream. I think I should have thinned my icing more before using. I wasn't thrilled with the way it turned out, but everyone esle thought it looked nice. It is the red and white cake in my photos. I'm ready to try again .