Have you ever found yourself wondering, “how much buttercream do I need to fill and cover my cake”? Then trawled through Google to find a bunch of tables/charts, only to find you were still needing to do a bunch of calculations in your head … and all you wanted to do, is just get on with it because time is getting on and your kid’s birthday party is on the next day and you legit ain’t got time for this! Gah!
Well, I’ve gone ahead and created a new online tool for those of us that just wants to calculate how many cups of buttercream you’ll need for your cake project. Welcome to the Buttercream Calculator!
This tool allows you to:
- Supply your own preference for how thick you want to apply the buttercream for the outside, and the filling layers
- Default is 1/4″ thickness for both, however some prefer thicker filling layers of 1/3″ – you can input what your preference is!
- Add as many tiers are you need, round or square/rectangle
- For each tier, configure for only filling, only coverage, or both (the instructions on how to configure for only filling, or only coverage, are supplied below the table on the tool itself)
Once you have configured your tiers, click the CALCULATE button below to see how many cups of buttercream you’ll need for your project. All you’ll need to know is how many cups of buttercream your favourite buttercream recipe yields to determine how many batches of buttercream to make. And that’s it!
Formula:
Number of batches = Number of cups you need / Number of cups your batch yields
The first example snip below is for filling and coverage of a 6″ round cake, standard 4″ height, made of 2 cake layers. Supposing my buttercream recipe yields 7 cups, I would need approximately 1/3 of a batch (2.29 / 7 = 0.33).
The second example snip below is for filling a 6″ round cake, made up of 4 cake layers (so 3 layers of filling).
The third example snip below is for covering a 6″ round cake, that is 4″ tall.
I hope the tool is useful for all you cakers out there. If you have any feedback, comments or issues, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me.