Naked and Barely Iced Cakes

We've all seen the cake that barely looks like it's iced. I'm Rachel Teufel. And I'm gonna share with you in this lesson, a few different ways to ice your cake, to create a more rustic style. One of which is the naked cake, which really doesn't have much icing on it at all, as well as what we're calling a barely iced cake, which has a little bit more buttercream than what you would normally find on a naked cake, but not a full coating like you would do for your final coat of buttercream. So let's head into the kitchen and explore a couple of styles of rustic cakes. Okay, so to get started with making a naked cake or a barely iced cake, there are a couple of things that you need. Of course, you need your cake layers that are already leveled. Don't trim the edges, just level the tops so that you have a nice, flat surface to work with. You also need a board that is slightly smaller than the cake. So I actually have five inch round cakes and a four inch round board. And that leaves, you know, when you center it, just about a half inch of cake over the edge. And the reason for that is because I don't like it when you can see the cake board underneath a barely iced cake. So I just go a little bit smaller than I need, and I have a little tape just to adhere it to my turntable. And then I also have a bag of buttercream. And on this one, I just have a round tip. It's a number 12, Wilton tip. And that is just to create the barrier should you put any icing or filling or anything like that in there. So to get started, little dollop of buttercream, right on your board and your first layer of cake, and do your best to center it. I know it's hard because you can't actually see the board. That's kind of why I like this particular cake turntable is that you can actually see through it so you can flip it over. I'll do that one more time, just so you can see, but I just want the cake and the board centered as well as I can. It doesn't have to be perfect, just somewhat close. And then what you're gonna do is utilizing your bag of buttercream, move just inside that outside edge and squeeze. And you wanna use your turntable to spin it. I'm just creating a dam here with my buttercream. Now, if you're using a filling, you can go ahead and put your filling inside of this dam. If you're just using buttercream, like I am myself, you can either a scoop it in with your spatula, or you can just keep piping, so I have my bag filled. I'm just gonna go ahead and keep piping. Great. And then you just want to be careful not to get too close to this edge yet. And I'm gonna set my special down, 45 degree angle, angled spatula, and then just spin my turntable to kind of flatten up that icing, make sure there aren't any gaps or bubbles in this particular area. And then I'm going to place my second layer of cake. And this is where you have a couple of choices to make, your first choice is, you can make them straight up and down, which is the best option that you could pick, and in this case, you can see that the sides of my cake are not actually perfectly straight. They sort of taper in a little bit and for a naked cake, it doesn't really matter if it's straight or has a little bit of a buldge or whatever the case is. It's a naked cake. It's intended to show you exactly what is in your dessert. So what I like to do at this point though, is go ahead and using my buttercream and my bag again, ever so gently, just put a tiny layer of buttercream right up against the dam that you just created. And the reason for that is it's a naked cake. So you don't want to cover a lot of the cake itself. You just wanna be able to fill in that gap and not have buttercream anywhere else. Use your special event to kind of drag the icing. Try to be careful not to get it on the cake itself at this point, you can just kind of wipe it, but if you see that you are lacking a little butter cream, like I am here, then you wanna fill that in. So I'm just gonna come back with a little bit more buttercream, make sure that is full, clean my spatula, and then drag that spatula one more time, again, just trying to smooth out that barrier that's there, without getting too much on the cake itself. And then you can just clean up your cake. So this is actually a naked cake. You do wanna put icing on the top, even though, you know, you've got cake exposed, it's nice to have a balance of cake and buttercream ratio. So I'm just again using my piping bag, little bit of buttercream on top, and I try not to go all the way to that outside edge. I just wanna make sure that I don't go over the edges, with a barely iced cake, the intention is to, sorry, I've got a little crumb in here. I didn't clean my spatula quite as well as should have. So make sure you wipe that off and then go ahead and set down your spatula again. It's about a 30 to 45 degree angle or so, and I'm just using my turntable to smooth out the top and then sort of push a little bit of that icing out towards the edges. With a barely ice cake again, you want buttercream on the top, but you don't want it to be spilling over the top. If you're gonna do a smooth buttercream with your naked cake. Now there are definitely styles out there of naked cakes where you are just sort of wisping that butter cream and getting it a little fuller and fluffier and thicker. And you can do that as well, that's not a problem at all. You just wanna make sure that you at least have a layer of buttercream on the top. So should you want an exposed naked cake, this is where you would stop, this is it. It is probably the easiest of cake decorating options that we have, is just simply to leave the cake exposed. You would want to adorn this cake in some way, whether you do drips of chocolate or fresh flowers, fresh fruit, sprinkles, you know, anything else to kind of fancy this up a little bit is gonna make for a prettier presentation, but this is a very rustic style. So, you know, you could also serve it exactly like this on a pretty platter and be done. And that's fine too. What I wanna show you next, though, is if you keep going with your icing a little bit, you'll get to what I call a barely iced cake. And it's sort of like next level from the completely naked cake. The naked cake for me is not preferable. And the reason why is that I'm in Denver and it's very dry here. And so I know there are a lot of other locations that are also dry, but this will become very crusty, probably within about an hour, depending upon, you know, if we happen to be in a rainy season or not. But typically here in Denver, we're pretty dry. So I don't like this particular style, simply for that reason, I think it's very pretty, but it allows the cake layers to dry out very fast, and nobody wants to have a dry cake. So just be mindful of the fact that if you do this, put it in a pretty pedestal that has a dome over top of it to kind of seal in and lock in that moisture for you so that your cake doesn't dry out. In addition, you could just continue to ice it, like I'm going to do, and this is called a barely iced. And so in this case, I'm gonna put more buttercream on, but not so much that I cover all of my cake. So I'm just sort of putting a little bit on, I'm not being super careful about how much coverage I have. I just wanna get some buttercream on there, and using the side of your spatula. You're just gonna push the buttercream into a couple of different spaces so that you can seal the cake, but the cake is still exposed. And so this for me is a much better option in the way of making sure that my cake is staying moist and not drying out because I have this ever so slight layer of buttercream, right on top of my cake, which allows the cake to be sealed. You sort of see a little bit of exposed cake, but it's nothing that you'll end up, you know, with a really thick layer of icing. And then you just seal that top. I'm gonna show you, rather than doing a nice clean top, I'm gonna show you sort of just this back and forth motion. It's almost like a stucco kind of a deal, but you know, you don't want any rhyme or reason, you wanna go back and forth, but sort of gently over top. And that just gives you this really pretty stucco design. So once you get to this point, you can just grab your straight edge and very gently, just gonna take off any excess buttercream. And this is kind of where you have a little bit of judgment call, you can in this case, leave it so that you have a larger amount exposed on one layer and maybe a little bit on top and a little bit on bottom. This is the kind of nice part about, again, both naked cakes and barely ice cakes is that it's up to your discretion as to how much buttercream you're gonna use or not use. And so it really does make your choices a little bit easier in the way of what you do with your cake. So I'm pleased with this because, you know, I have some chocolate cake exposed, but then I have a nice coverage of buttercream. And then I have a little chocolate cake exposed. So this to me is sort of the perfect barely iced cake. You get a seal, but it's not so covered that you can't tell that there's cake underneath. Well, what I would do here again, because I have a smaller board under here, I sort of filled that gap in with a little bit of buttercream. I'm actually gonna put this whole cake with the turntable, into the refrigerator and chill it for at least a half an hour. And then I'll come back with a knife and I can just slide right underneath that, break the seal and place it up on either a pedestal or put it on my cake display board or whatever it is I'd like to do. If you need some ideas on how to decorate your naked cake, check out some of my other videos, things like adding fresh fruit or even fresh flowers. This style of cake creates a super pretty, rustic design.