No, you don’t. Plenty of people have iced a perfectly good Christmas cake on a dinner plate. But if you’ve ever finished the sides and found a lumpy ridge everywhere you stopped and started, a turntable is about the cheapest fix there is.

The trick to smooth icing is holding the spatula or scraper still and letting the cake move. On a plate you can’t do that. You shuffle the plate round with one hand, scrape a bit, shuffle again, and every stop leaves a mark. On a turntable you give it a steady spin and the scraper does the work.

Where you’ll notice it most is buttercream or ganache sides, where long even passes with a scraper give you that clean bakery finish. It’s also a big help trimming marzipan or fondant at the base, and for piping a border, because your hand stays put and the cake comes to you. Rough royal icing snow scenes are the exception. If you’re going for peaks, a turntable is nice to have but hardly essential.

The one worth getting

Skip the lightweight plastic ones. They wobble, the cheap ones stick halfway through a spin, and a heavy fruit cake shows up every flaw. I’d go for something like the Ohuhu 12″ aluminium cake turntable, which is heavy enough to stay put:

  • A 12 inch aluminium top, wide enough for most celebration cakes and the board underneath.
  • A stainless steel bearing, so it spins smoothly in either direction. Handy if you’re left-handed.
  • A rubber pad underneath so the base doesn’t creep across the worktop.
  • Two angled icing spatulas and three icing combs (one plain, two textured) in the box, so you can get started without buying anything else.

Cleaning is a wipe with warm soapy water and a dry with a tea towel.

How I’d ice the sides, step by step

  1. Put a damp square of kitchen roll between the turntable and the cake board so nothing slides when you press.
  2. Spread a thin crumb coat all over and chill it for 20 minutes. Don’t skip this; it’s what makes the final layer smooth.
  3. Pile on the final layer more thickly than you think you need.
  4. Hold the scraper upright against the side, at a slight angle, and spin the turntable with your other hand in one long movement. Scrape the excess back into the bowl and repeat until it’s even.
  5. Pull the ridge at the top edge in towards the centre with an angled spatula.

If you’re still spreading icing with a table knife, our post on whether you need an offset spatula covers the other half of the job.