I am having trouble with smoothing. Here is what I did:

Made the cake and didn't have the filling made (didn't work out well, tried to make Bavarian creme) so I put it in the fridge, made the filling the next day, cut it, filled it and froze it overnight.

Took it out last night and carved it (that's another topic... ), put it back in the freezer for a bit.

Crumb coated it although I think the icing was a little too thick. Waited for it to crust and it was still soft before I went to bed so back in the fridge because I wasn't sure it would be good to freeze it a third time. I had some condensation spots which probably meant it wasn't thawed 100%. ?

Today it looked alright, I let it sit out (was that the problem?) a bit before I iced it. I tried to smooth it with parchment and it was ripping up some of the icing. So then I have crumbs on the cake and iced it over again and tried the spatula in hot water trick with not much luck.

I am giving up because I am out of icing and don't have enough to even try to clean it up some. The actual cake I don't think can be fixed, I did my decorations on it already just to get it done. I was going to cut around the bottom--I am *trying* to make a 3-D ladybug--and pipe some dots.

Besides having no patience, can someone please tell me what I did wrong? Is it fixable at all? I used a writing tip for the spots and I can see the swirl I did, how do you get rid of that? Smoothing? I'm afraid to touch them for fear of smearing the whole thing. Very frustrated and disappointed.

I haven't done a carved cake, but it sound like your icing was too cold when you went to put on the final coat. What kind of icing did you use? Maybe the icing was just to stiff.

I crumb coat with a very thin layer of thinner consistancy buttercream. Let it sit of about 15 mins. then put on a thick coat of thinner consistancy icing and smooth with a spatula.
If it isn't smooth enough, then I use the parchment. I have read that Viva towels are the best, but again, I haven't tried that yet either.

It could be your cake was still frozen some. That would cause your icing not to crust, with the cake still thawing it caused the extra moisture. Also maybe you should have left the cake out of the refridgerator while trying to get it to crust.

this may sound strange, but when i'm having a problem getting my icing to crust (has to do with the humitidy here) i lay a piece of wax paper on top of the cake, use a long angled spatchula to smooth out the icing with the paper on top, i then place the cake in the fridge and let it get nice and cold (hard) then peal the paper off. The top of the cake will be nice and smooth. I use a buttercream that has a lot of butter in it, so i don't know if it would work with a crisco based icing.

I never frost a cake unless it has completely thawed. I use a thin consistency buttercream and get it as smooth as possible with my spatula. I then leave it alone for about 5-10 minutes. I then use a viva papertowel to smooth it. I have never had any success with using a crumbcoat. My opinion is that your cake was probably not thawed enough and your icing may have been a little too stiff.

It usually takes a little practice and patience to find a method that works best for you!

Better luck on your next cake!

Thanks everyone! I think it was a bad combo of the above--cake still frozen and my icing was *definitely* too thick. I have so much to learn!