I am making a cake for a friends retirement party at work Thursday and I want to do a butter cream stencil on the side of the cake. What consistency should the butter cream be and what's the best method for attaching the stencil to the side of the cake before adding the butter cream? Thank you.

When applying a stencil to a cake I like to secure the stencil with push pins and the buttercream should be thin but not so thin that you have excess buttercream on the cake when lifting away the stencil I have done this many times and I have found that when using a stencil you should practice with it on another surface first to see how much buttercream you should use and how thin it should be because i have found that each stencil is different. Hope this helps.

I just made my first stenciled cake and I used IMBC... Really smooth and very easy to work with... No air bubbles, just smooth icing...

Thank you for the advice. Great idea on the push pins I am going to have to buy some. I find it a little difficult to try an hold the stencil to the side of the cake and apply the frosting because the stencil keeps trying pull away from the side of the cake. I made my daughter hold the stencil down when I made my brothers wedding cake the darn thing was driving me crazy.

Corsage pins work pretty good too for holding the stencil in place. Make sure your cake has been chilled in the refrigerator first. Then pin the stencil to cake. With and pointed angled small spatula or a narrow width plastic putty knife or small bowel scrapper, spread your thinned down frosting on. Don't be afraid go over stencil again with no frosting to take off the excess. Spread in one direction helps also. Unpin the stencil, remove and voila! Wash your stencil with each application on the cake to keep from smearing frosting on cake. Have fun!