Coconut cake with raspberry filling and buttercream frosting.
This was my first cake where my client wanted buttercream instead of fondant (the coconut cake was BC, but any flaws were easily covered by the coconut!). She wanted a look that was as smooth as fondant, which can be REALLY hard to do. I made sure to practice a lot before I did the real cake, and after trying multiple buttercream frostings, techniques in applying the frosting, etc., I finally figured it all out. I found my buttercream frosting on youtube and I frosted my chilled cake (chilling the cake is very important!!) with an offset spatula and smoothed and leveled the frosting as best as I could with my bench scraper. It's very important to get a crusting buttercream (frosting that gets semi-hard... a little crust on the outside) and chill the cake in between each round of smoothing. The last step is to use these fabulous paper towels...
Don't try to use any other brand!! Viva paper towels are the only thing that work. You can also use a high density foam roller brush, and I usually use a combination of both. Instead of describing how to do it, I'll just post a couple of videos that I found really helpful.
The Upside Down Method
Edna's Method