How to do Fondant Ruffles on a Cake
Today I’m finally sharing How to do Fondant Ruffles on a Cake! I’ve been promising this tutorial for months and have actually taken pictures of doing ruffles on two different cakes (and even a video) … but more pressing things always hold me back.
That, and the fact that it takes me hours and hours to edit this many pictures… that’s another reason this tutorial has been slow coming!
Anywho… but now it’s done – or at least this one is! My son is helping me edit the videos and I’ve included two short ones – I’ll as more as they’re finished, but for now I hope the pics will help!
Here’s what you’ll need:
- Fondant (my ruffles are different shades of pink, but you can use just one color or many – up to you!)
- Rolling Pin
- Ribbon Cutter
- Pizza Wheel or Pastry Wheel
- Ball Tool
- Foam Pad
- Sugar Glue
- Paint Brush (used only for food purposes)
- Corn Starch
- Cake covered in fondant
Now let’s get started!
Step 1:
Take a ball of fondant and roll it out into a long strip. I don’t have a measurement, but you want it pretty thin! Then using the ribbon cutter*, cut strips – for this cake, they were about 1.5 inches wide. You can do them narrower or wider, but that’s a pretty average width that works for most designs.
The strips do not have to be long enough to go all the way around the cake – in fact, I don’t recommend it because the longer they are, the harder they are to handle. The ruffles are so irregular that it’s very easy to hide the seams!
*Note: if you don’t have a ribbon cutter, you can also do this with a pastry wheel and a ruler, but my ribbon cutter is an invaluable tool and I highly recommend getting one like this. You can adjust the width from very narrow to as wide as the whole thing, plus it also comes with stitching wheels and wavy edges!
Step 2:
Separate out a single strip of fondant and dust it with a little corn starch (not pictured). Slide your foam pad under one end of the strip and you’re about ready to make it ruffly.
Step 3:
Now, this is where the video will come in handy (scroll down below the two pics to find it)…. you want to use the ball tool to apply pressure to one edge of the ribbon, rolling it down onto the fondant and pulling away- making it thinner and it will also begin to curl.
I work very quickly when doing this, moving the fondant strip as I need to and working from one end to the other.
Here’s the short video demonstration thanks to my son Joshua (his blog is JoshuaKade.com)!
Step 4:
To apply the ruffles to the cake, you’re going to start at the top (if the ruffles are pointing up) and paint some sugar glue onto the cake. I usually do about an inch of glue all the way around.
Step 5:
Pick up your ruffled ribbons and begin to attach it to the cake. Be careful to leave the ruffled edge free and glue the remaining flat part of the ribbon to the cake. I like to press it on firmly in small sections – sometimes even adding tiny pleats to give it more dimension.
Step 6:
Continue all the way around – adding extra pieces of ribbon as needed. You can see on the left edge of this cake where I have a seam. I just pinch the top of the ruffle together a little and it blends right in!
Step 7:
Move down about half an inch below the first ruffle and repeat the steps. I like to have a good overlap!
Wash, rinse, repeat… haha! Here’s a short video of me attaching some of the ruffles:
When I added more pink color to the fondant to get the darker shades, the fondant got a little bit too soft, so I used the toothpicks to hold the ruffles up until they dried a little. You could do this for any/all fondant where the ruffles wouldn’t hold up well and just let them dry for a few hours or overnight!
Once you remove them, the ruffles will sag a little covering the holes or you can do tiny dots of buttercream to cover them!
And that’s it! Easy-peasy! I have a couple of other things I do to get different “looks” with my ruffles and I hope to have those shared very soon as well!
I also have a tutorial available for how to make the gum paste tutorial here! This cake was 6″ and 8″ round vanilla cake with vanilla buttecream filling and frosting and homemade marshmallow fondant.
Do you have any questions about how to do fondant ruffles on a cake? Leave me a comment and I’ll do my best to answer and help out!
very nice!! Thanks for that!!!!
You’re welcome!
Hi Rose, Beautiful cake! how many layers is each cake? I like the height. Thanks
Each tier is two layers of cake and each layer is about 2″ plus filling in between.
hi – is it possible to fridge the fondant cake?
thanks
I’ve never had good luck refrigerating fondant covered cakes… sorry!
After decorating a cake with fondant,is it a good idea just to leave
It in a room temperature?
Do you use the same process when making a cake with what looks like
Strips of ribbon wrapped around it?
Can you leave a link to an example of what you’re talking about?
I sent an email asking about using MMF for the ruffle technique…..should have watched the video first 🙂
Will the MMF ruffles adhere to a smooth buttercream iced cake or do you recommend using MMF to cover the cake? Thanks for sharing.
I’ve always done it on a thin layer of fondant (it doesn’t even have to be pretty) – I’m just not sure that buttercream would hold the weight of all the ruffles!
Linda,
I was wondering if you tried putting ruffles on buttercream (instead of fondant), could you please let me know?
thanks,
Ziba
I was wondering same thing. Someone asked me if cake be buttercream with do half of bottom tier ruffles
Hi Rose! Fondant ruffles is my next cake project. Thanks SO much for this. I just wanted to make sure you use purely fondant and you don’t add any tylose to it all to make it a bit stiffer?
xx,
Sharon
Yes, I used straight up fondant. I allowed it to sit out some so it wasn’t super soft. You could add tylose if you wanted and it wouldn’t hurt, but I don’
Hi Rose,
Thanks very much for your tutorial very helpful. Can i use half fondant, half gumpaste to make the ruffles? Thanks again for sharing your knowledge. x
Absolutely! It’ll work perfectly!
Hi Rose. Thanks for this great tutorial. If I don’t have a ball tool, can I use something else instead?
I’ve only ever used a ball tool, so I’m not sure what else might work.
What are your thoughts on leaving it a butter cream cake and then applying ruffles instead of covering the cake with fondant and then applying the ruffles. Not sure I’m making sense.
I haven’t tried it, but I worry that the buttercream wouldn’t hold the weight of the ruffles. If you want to try it, I’d recommend doing a practice run on a small cake before doing it for a party or customer!
Lslade,
I was wondering if you tried putting ruffles on buttercream (instead of fondant), could you please let me know?
thanks,
Ziba
Beautiful! Do you have a tutorial on how to make the crown?
I do! The tiara tutorial is here: How to Make a Gum Paste Tutorial.
thanks!
You make it look so easy, and I love that because it gives me confidence to try new techniques! Today was my first attempt at ruffles, and despite the fact that I kept telling myself “it’ll look better when it gets more rows on it”, truth is… It looked horr-i-ble and I ended up ripping all of the fondant off, slapping on more buttercream with minimal decorations, and calling it done. Thankfully, it was delicious! Apple spice cake (your cake recipe, I just added the apples and cinnamon) with brown sugar cinnamon buttercream. I think my mm fondant was too wet.. Any suggestions?
If the fondant is too soft, you can roll out the thin strips then just let them dry/harden for 20-30 minutes before starting to ruffle them. If the whole batch is too soft, you can knead in more powdered sugar to firm it up.
my couple of attempts with MMF came out to soft to do these ruffles too, but it worked for what I was doing at the time. I have to fix my microwave so i can make some more fondant. I usually stick with buttercream but have experimented with modelling chocolate and MMF a couple times. My next practice is using one of your doctored cake mix recipes. I look forward to trying some of your other techniques.
Thanks Rose, I just made my first cake with fondant ruffles!
Awesome! So glad to hear it!
I was wondering what size round is that bottom tier and about how much fondant it took to d the ruffles. Thanks!
The bottom tier is an 8″ round tier. I’m really not sure how much fondant I used – probably 1-2 pounds?
Thanks a million!
so I am very much an amateur and I need to make these ruffles only rainbow lol…. so would you just evenly split your fondant into six balls and color each ball…. I have set aside aprox 600 grams ( just over a pound) of fondant so I was thinking 100 grams for each color. I would love your thoughts.
This is absolutely beautiful, i have never done ruffles before but i think you make it so simple, im definitely going to give it a try! Thanks Rose, my first time here too, love ur tutorials!
Thanks so much! I hope you’ll come back often 🙂
Hi Rose, I am learning how to make fondant on cakes and I am having a really hard time sticking the candy to one another. I saw you used the pink liquid to attach the ribbon on the cake? I was wondering if you could show me how to make the liquid so that I could try to stick two pieces of candy together and how to make the candy shine like the sugar glue you used to paint it on the cake. Thank you.
Check out my post here: How to Make Sugar Glue.
Hi Rose,
Can you tell me how long the ruffles on this cake took to put on? I’ve never done ruffles like this before so I’m trying to get an idea of whether or not I have time to do this cake this weekend. Thanks!
A small tier (like this one) probably takes me 2-4 hours!? I worked on a 3 tiered cake for 8-9 hours.
I’ll be making my first fondant ruffle cake this weekend (in hot, humid Florida) and I’m very worried the ruffles will get soft and droopy. What are your thoughts?
I use straight gumpaste to make tiny flowers to place on my cupcakes which I sell at a green market and they become completely droopy on top of the cupcakes. And that’s straight gumpaste!
I know it would taste better to be straight fondant but to be safe, do you think I should add 1/3 gumpaste to the fondant? The cake will be inside a small civic center (which doesn’t get that cool), but it is 75 degrees with 90% humidity around here.
Thank you so much!
Hi — What do you do differently if your cake is square, rather than round? I would like to try this technique on a square cake. Thanks!
I don’t think I’d do anything differently!
My niece wants me to make 3 large 14 ins square fondant fancy cakes for her wedding can I use this method to make the cake sit in it as though it was a paper case thank you
Hi
Does the same Technic apply to vertical ruffles?
It would be very similar, yes.
Thanks so much Rose. This has been of great help to me. I have an order for a wedding cake and was wondering how to do the ruffles. I thought it was done by piping stiff royal icing with a rose tip.
Thanks for sharing your technics. I want to know what is best cream to apply on the cake to cover with fondant that will not melt and holding the ruffles.
I’m not sure I understand your question, but I used my vanilla buttercream under fondant, then the fondant, then the ruffles.
Wow thanx for sharing. Been wonder how to get this done and I’m happy with how you gave a thorough tutorial. Highly appreciated.
So glad to help! Merry Christmas!
I am making my son’s wedding cake. His bride-to-be wants ruffles on one tier. Can I put fondant ruffles on a butter cream frosted cake? Please advise as this wedding is in June 2016.
NO, I don’t recommend doing fondant ruffles on buttercream. They would be too heavy and not adhere well and I’m pretty sure they’d fall off.
When making ruffles and you add tylose powder or gum paste to it, is it safe to eat it?
Yes, I add tylose to it and yes, it’s safe to eat, although most people don’t want to because it gets hard.
Hi, I want to try to do these ruffles but in the Rose style and wondered if you could actually “pre-make” some of the ruffle flowers beforehand to help save time when decorating?
Not sure already done it. No wish it was possible. I did a 10 inch had rose ruffles and regular one took me forever to complete it.
Could you do it upside down and turn it over the next day when dry to get a less floppy ruffle
Yes!
If I want to do a petal ruffle cake, is fondant still the medium to use? I’ve been reading that fomdant won’t hold. I saw that a gumpaste/fondant mix is ideal but I’ve seen mixed reviews. What do you recommend?
I’m not exactly sure which technique you’re referring to, but in my experience, fondant always holds well on fondant unless you just have it too thick/heavy.
When you put toothpicks for your ruffles and you let them dry did you leave your cake out or back in the fridge?
I leave it out.
can you put it back in the fridge at all?
I don’t because I live in the south where it’s incredibly humid. If I refrigerate a fondant cake, then take out, it gets covered in condensation.
Thanks for the tutorial – great job! QUESTION: When transporting a three-tier wedding cake with ruffles to the event, do you stack first, then attach ruffles, or is it possible to attach ruffles to each tier and stack on site??
Out of the hundreds (actually closer to 2000) cakes I’ve done, I’ve only ever assembled TWO on site. I do all of my assembling at home so I really can’t give great advice on whether that would work or not. Sorry 🙁
Hi do you use just fondant for the ruffles or gumpaste.?
I use fondant!
If you don’t want to use toothpicks, you can use tylose powder. This will make the fondant more stiff. Depending on how much you mix in with the fondant, it will stand up straight away.
Quick question i just finished a ruffled cake. With marshmallow fondnat. …the ruffles have gone hard. ….is that ok. All i picture is a big crack and crumble sound going threw the ruffles lol
I’ve never had that happen, so you should be good to go. The only difference might be in the kind of fondant – I use homemade marshmallow fondant.
Thank u .it turned out great.
Please help! My mm fondant keeps tearing, while I’m making the ruffles with the ball tool. What am I doing wrong?
Would you use standard ready to roll fondant or would you use a modelling/ florist type fondant if you were buying the fondant?
I use homemade or store-bought ready to use fondant. Never gum paste if that’s what you’re talking about.
You can make your own adjustable ribbon cutter using two blades for a rotary papercutter, a bolt as long as you want, and 4 nuts. Wearing gloves, sand the edge of the cutter blade with 120 grit paper so it is no longer dangerous and then use the nuts to lock the cutters in place on the bolt.
This is really helpful to a novice like myself. Just one query, would you always use plain sugar paste, not modelling paste to make ruffles ?
I’m not sure what you mean by “plain” or “modeling” paste. Can you explain?
I was so happy to see this tutorial! I have a panel mold for ruffles but like this so much better! I have to do a ruffle cake this weekend, and I will do it this way. Thanks for answering the questions about putting them on fondant rather than buttercream because I thought the buttercream might not hold them up well, and my cake has to travel. You made my day with this tutorial!
YAY! So happy to hear it!