Anyone have great tips for how to get perfect corners on square and rectangle cakes? I am finally getting the smoothing thing down thanks to help from you guys and VIVA paper towels but I still struggle greatly with corners. I can never get very crisp edges on my corners. I'm sure someone here has some great technique so please share.

adding myself to this post so i can get the responses too...

i have SUCH a hard time with this! if i don't smooth with parchment paper, the edges either rise above the cake edge, or go out horizontally too far (depending on which way i do the last swipe). if i do smooth, the edges get all soft and round...argh!

Have you seen the upside down icing technique in the articles section here?? I tried it last night on an 8x8 square, just to see if I could do it! The edges of my icing were sharper than the edges on the actual cake!! And the top was almost perfectly smooth when I pulled the wax paper off! All I had to do was use the Viva's a little bit.....it was unbelievable!!! I can't believe that I did it without dropping the whole thing when flipping or that a newbie like me could get a cake so smooth with edges so straight and crisp!!! lol You should give it a try!

Jenn

I hadn't looked at that article jenn. I think I may give it a try. Thanks

It's hard to explain, but on corners, I use a bench scraper to hold against the left side of the corner I'm working on, then use an offset spatula to smooth the right side. I hope this makes sense. It takes some practice, but I get very nice corners on square and rectangle cakes.

What is a bench scraper?

Thanks for the tip JennT. The upside down technicque looks pretty straight forward. I'm gonna give it a try!!

Daniela

Here is are some step-by-step photos and instructions on how to get those perfectly straight edges and sharp corners
http://cakecentral.com/article51-How-To-Get-Crisp-Corners-On-Your-Cake.html