I have to do a birthday cake with lots of deep color and lots of detail. Its going to be white and the picture is very detailed and needs to be blacks bright, dark, red and green. And the cake has to be iced in BC. How would you do this? It's for first of December so I have a little time for what ever. Thanks for any help given!

How about a frozen buttercream transfer (FBCT) you put on the cake at the last minute to avoid the colors spreading into each other?

I have never done a FBCT with a lot of detail. Any tips on how to do it? I'm up for trying anything.

Hi KimErskine,

There is an article on how to create a FBCT on this site. It is located at http://cakecentral.com/articles/73/how-to-create-a-frozen-buttercream-transfer

Couple of tips from when I made my first one, make sure you layer your colors correctly. I think of it as getting dressed backwords the last thing you would put on will be the first thing you outline or color in.

Also, I made mine too thin the first time and you could almost see through it and it kept tearing when I tried to apply it to the cake.

HTH and Have Fun with it!!!

trfeist, thanks for the link, it was helpful. I think I will go with this. Gotta try it sometime..

I've made several of these and always have a lot of fun with them. After the hoops I used to put myself through to make a complex design on a cake, this is SO easy I'll never go back!

Not that I'm trying to deter you from ever trying a FBCT, but I'd do a Colorflow plaque instead. If the design is really detailed, I'd be a little hesitant to do that in BC on my first try. With Colorflow, you can make it well in advance and be assured that it looks good and that it's going to work. JMHO!

Here's a detailed Colorflow that I did recently, and it was easy:

http://cakecentral.com/gallery/2162620

If you decide to do CF, please pm me for a couple hints and tips.

Yes, colorflow (aka royal icing runouts) is another way to go. For some reason, I'm pretty terrible at these, but I agree that everybody needs to find their level of comfort with different techniques. If it's okay with you, I'll be PM'ing you too for tips and hints. Maybe I can finally learn how to do this right!

have you thought of making a gumpaste plaque and working on that? Depending on the detail of your design you can paint with straight food gels/lemon or vodka as a thinner, color flow onto it and just attached it to the buttercream with some melted chocolate works well. I mostly work in buttercream and find this helps with detailed projects. Making a cutout stencil of each piece(like a puzzle) out of fondant/tylose and cutting out the pieces and then putting them together gives you a dimensional look too, just some thoughts. good luck!!

Do you have a picture of what you are wanting to do. Everything has a different look and sometimes one medium of icing will give you a better look for what you are trying to do. It just really depends on the image and the final look you are going for.

I've done some pretty detailed FBCTs (see the FFA emblem in my photos) so they can be done that way.