How To Do Wavy Fondant Overlay on Cake {Picture Tutorial}

Since I shared a fun Gingerbread House Christmas Candy Birthday cake for you yesterday and I have another to share with you tomorrow, I thought today I'd do a short tutorial for today.

And if things go well, I'm also going to share another super easy candy recipe this afternoon!

So my friend Yaneri over at Sweet Bakes of Mine has been asking me to do this tutorial since last Christmas when she saw the design on the Holly Jolly Christmas cake!

And finally... a year later... I'm getting it done. Nobody ever accused me of being a "fast" blogger!!

So... this is how I do a fondant overlay. Granted, this may not be the right way, the best way, or the easiest way... but it's how I do it.

When I first wanted to try this, I couldn't find any instructions online, so I just made it up.

My only complaint, if I have one at all, is that the fondant is pretty thick on the top because there are 2 layers, but I don't see any practical way to avoid that - so it is what it is!

Start by covering a cake with your base color (the color you want to show on the bottom). Here you see I have a 6" round cake covered in red (Satin Ice Vanilla) fondant.

Now, take a ball of fondant in the color you want to use for the overlay. For me, I'm using white so it'll look like snow!

I roll out a circle of white marshmallow fondant. I do this on The Mat - best.fondant.tool.ever. Since my cake is 6" round, I roll the fondant out to about 10" round so that I have plenty of fondant to hang over the edges.

This is super easy to determine if you have The Mat because the measurements are right there!! {I actually had to add a little more fondant after taking this picture so my circle would be a little larger.}

Since my end shape was a little wonky, I took my pizza wheel and trimmed it to a more roundish shape. Is roundish a word?? 🙂

Next, I take my small Wilton pastry wheel and simply cut a wavy edge.

I try to stay within an inch (give or take) of the edge of the fondant but going up and down to get the effect.

When I get it all done, I simply peel off the top layer of the mat, flip it over and center it on the cake. I don't have a picture of that step because I'm not talented enough to flip over the fondant onto the cake while holding a camera and focusing for a picture. But you can imagine it, I'm sure!! 😉

Now - here's the part that can be tricky. Those wavy edges don't always want to lay down "just so". So you may have to smooth, stretch, finagle a little bit to get it to lay correctly... I even trimmed a couple of places with my Xacto knife, but finally, I have a nice pretty overlay - in this cake... to look like a snow capped cake!

You can see lots of pictures of the finished Santa’s Stuck in the Chimney Christmas Birthday Cake here.

You can also see some more of my cakes with fondant overlays here on this (repeat) Christmas Candy Cake and on these Lollipop Cakes here and here.

If you want to fancy this up a little more... there's at least one other option!

You can use an extruder to make a "border" for it. You can see that here on the Holly Jolly Christmas Cake. Now - one other way to get this look, but not have to work quite so hard is to make it an illusion.

Here's an example: For this Yo Gabba Gabba cake, I simple made a red rope with my extruder and glued it on the side of the cake in a wavy pattern.

Then I cut ribbons of fondant with my FMM Ribbon cutter and trimmed them right up to the red border. This way it looks like a wavy overlay, but really, it's just a completely white tier, with a red wavy border and stripes on the bottom! How fun is that?

 Wow... so that's it! Do you have any questions about doing a fondant overlay on cakes? Please leave them in the comments and I'll answer and help out if I can!

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