How to make a Pink Ombre Ruffle Dress Cake for a Fashion Party

 I've still got a couple of years to go before my girls are into the whole fashion party scene.....I think.

So when my friend Naomi V Photography asked me if I could create something for her daughter's Fashion themed Birthday party I agreed but I wasn't quite sure what I was going to come up.

Luckily Naomi had arranged for Putting on a Party on come on board and they asked if I could make a dress cake and heel cupcakes.

Ummm could I? Well I wasn't sure but y'know seeing as it was for a friend I decided to give it my best try.


I'm a bit of a fan of those ruffly dresses with swathes of material that the couture houses make up for the runways and actresses to wear on the red carpets, so I thought I would go with that look.

The theme was white, silver and pink so I decided to start with white and graduate down to darker shades of pink on the skirt .

I'm pretty happy with the finished result.

Inside the cake was raspberry flavored mud cake, once again starting at white and deepening in graduated shades of pink.

The actual bodice of the cake is cake as well, I was originally going to make the top out of fondant but I knew that cake was achievable, and way tastier so I just carved it out.

If you are attempting this cake I would suggest that you should have some experience with cakes and working with fondant first.

 Pink cake stand from Clara French

Pink Ombre Ruffle Dress Cake instructions

Like always this is just the way I did it. I trimmed my cake as I was adding the layers, mostly to save ganache and for me doing it this way the end cake ends up less lopsided. Also my ganache was very, very firm as we had a cold snap the day I was making this cake. I have not provided any recipes as I am trusting that you have a little cake experience if you are making this cake. Conversion to inches approximates.

5 cakes 16cm (6 ") wide by 8 cm (3") high (mine were in graduating shades of pink and white)
1 X 16 cm (6") cake board - very sturdy
1 X 23cm (9") cake board - very sturdy
White ganache (you will need to use about 600grams white chocolate)
off set spatula
Cake dowel
Ready roll fondant (pettince)
dusky pink/ burgandy food color
Cake smoothers X 2
large rolling pin
small sharp knife
small rolling pin
ruffling/frilling tool
non stick petal pad/foam (see here for example) optional for thinner ruffles
cornflour/ cornstarch
small brush and water


* Fondant dries out very fast. You must work quickly and keep in an airtight container when not in use. Knead well before use.
**Some people may prefer to use a pasta machine to roll the ruffles very thin, that is more than ok, I say do what makes you happy and works :)

Knead the fondant well and using the food color make 4 different shades ranging from pale pink through to a deep dusky pink. Make double of the paler pink.

Cover the 23cm (9") cake board with the paler pink fondant and allow to set overnight. If you like you can attache ribbon around the edge of the board using double sided sticky tape or a hot glue gun.

Cut the brown edges of the tops, bottoms and sides of the cakes.

Place a small amount of ganache onto the 16cm cake board and press the first cake layer (darkest pink) onto the board.

Top the first cake layer with a thick layer of ganache, press on the second cake layer (medium pink) and pop into the fridge to chill a little.

Eeek I know this looks messy, but I just can't sweat the little things when I know it's all gonna get covered with ruffles, it's not in my nature.

Remove from the fridge and carve a little of the second cake layer off so that it is a bit smaller that the first layer. Add more ganache to the top of the second layer and press on the 3rd layer of cake (light pink). I trimmed my 3rd cake a bit before popping it onto the ganached 2nd layer. Place in fridge to chill.

Add the 4th layer (palest pink) using the same process and trimming as the other layers and the final white layer. As the white layer will be very small, make sure to carve it off one side as you need the rest to make the bodice. You should be able to get another 2 layers from the white cake, add them to the cake ganaching and chilling in between each layer.

Once the final white cake layer is added add a dowel down the center of the cake. To add a dowel push it into the middle of the cake piercing each layer, draw a line at the top of the cake and then remove the down and cut it down to size. Return the dowel to the center of the cake.

Make sure the ganach is well set and then carve the cake to get the dress shape you need.

Ganache around the sides and top of the cake and allow to set.

Do a second layer of ganache around the cake making sure the finish is as smooth as possible. You may need to use a hot knife, spatula or smoothing tool.

Cover the cake with white fondant. I did this in 2 sections, the smaller top bodice section first and then the skirt. It is possible to do this as the cake will be covered with ruffles which will hide any joins.

Knead the fondant and then roll out with a large rolling pin  until quite thin, trim to a circle that will be large enough to come down just under the waist. Lift the fondant over the cake, center and press is down on the cake making it as smooth as possible. I wasn't able to get it smooth enough so I trimmed some excess of at the back and rubbed over it with the smoothers until the join wasn't noticeable

OK still messy and a bit too bumpy - don't worry it's about to get covered.

Roll out more fondant, this time in a longish rectangle to wrap around the skirt joining together at the back and trimming off any excess from the back and bottom. Use cake smoothers to get the finish as neat as possible. With a knife mark on the dress little indents to indicate where you are going to change the ruffle colours.

Using some edible glue attach the white fondant covered dress cake onto the 23 cm pink covered board.

If you have a cake turntable you can pop the cake onto the turntable but it is not essential.

To Make the fondant ruffles dust the workbench with cornflour (cornstarch), take a piece of fondant about 1 1/2 tsp and shape it into a rectangle, using the small rolling pink roll in out into a long strip. As you roll you may need to press the sides in carefully with the sides/heels of you hands to stop it from getting too wide. (or if you find that is not working you can always use a sharp knife to trim it back to size) Keep rolling until the strip is quite thin. I like to pick the strip up after each roll to ensure it is not sticking to the bench and when necessary dust underneath again.

Pick the strip of fondant up and place it onto the non stick foam. Using the middle section of the frilling tool roll back and forth (like using a rolling pin) to make the strip even thinner, you will probably get it to double in length.

  Then use the edge of the frilling tool rolling back and forth to frill one edge of the strip a little more.

 For this dress I made the first couple of dark dusty pink ruffles wider than normal to look like a bit of a swishy tail at the side.

Attach this strip of fondant to your cake cone starting at the bottom right corner. As the color is graduating diagonally you will need to start the first ruffle off just on one side with a short length approximately 8 to 10 cm  (3 to 3.5 ") long. Brush on a very small amount of water to the cake cone and press the fondant strip onto the cake. I tried to gather the strip to make it appear more ruffly (see picture).

 Continue making strips of fondant and attaching them to the dress cake working your way up diagonally until you reach the indicator you have marked in the dress, then switch over to the medium pink fondant.


Cover the skirt of the dress up to the waist in this way, switching to a lighter color at each of the indicators.If your length of fondant runs out don't worry just start off with a a new strip at the same spot you finish off the last strip.

To get a full looking skirt I have in some sections added extra short lengths of ruffles ie. the ruffles did not circle the whole cake around they were only about 8 to 15cm(3 to 5 ") long.

When you get to the waist, stop working from the bottom and start attaching the ruffles from the top, 'bustline' of the dress and work down the the waist. I added 3 or 4 extra short ruffles in the bust area to fill it out a bit.


Continue the ruffles attaching downwards until you reach the waist.

Make one final strip of fondant. With this strip use the ruffle tool on both sides and attach it to the waist along it's middle so that the edge ruffles lift up at the bottom and top. Making this finish as smooth as possible without adding extra gthering.


I attached a length of non edible material ribbon to the cake with edible glue and added a flower made from some of the leftover fondant.


To make the flower I cut out 4 different sized blossoms popped them on the non stick foam and using a boning tool thinned out the flowers. I attached then together using edible glue, added a silver sprinkle and then used a modeling tool to bend the petals in a little.

If you haven't been to my site before you might not know that I have a book out called Sweets on a Stick. It's a kid friendly book with over 150 recipes for all different types of sweets on a stick including cookies, candy, pies, cupcakes and cake pops. The recipes in the book are waaaay easier that this cake. It is a US release book with metric conversions at the back.

It's lots of fun and is available here at amazon:

Or here at fishpond (Aus/NZ)

Easy Pink Ombre Butter Cream Frosting Cake tutorial for Real people

 

I made a pink ombre cake for my daughter's 5th birthday party (you know that's just fancy talk for saying pink graduated rainbow cake).

I'm so sorry, there are no endless ruffles, and inside there are not 8 different graduated layers.It's just a simple cake you can decorate with a spatula or if you needed to a knife. So simple pretty much anyone could do it.

The key here is to start off with a purposely messy design. Cause lets be real for a change. Most home cooks don't have all the tools you need to make one of those super spectacular graduated ruffle cakes, and even if you do go out and buy everything, your first or even second attempt probably won't look like the ones you see in all the pictures online.

So if you want to see a graduated pink cake that real people can make here's how I did it...... 

Easy Pink Ombre Frosted Cake

Ingredients and Equipment

1 cake baked in 2 layers 
1 large batch frosting (I used Kaye's butter cream from The Whimsical Bakehouse: Fun-to-Make Cakes That Taste as Good as They Look)
1 cake board same size as cake
Light Pink, medium pink and dark pink/burgundy gel food color, maybe also purple and black (mine were mostly Wilton which you can pick up from cake decorating or hobby stores)
Disposable piping bags or ziplock bags
Offset spatuala or large flat knife

Step 1. Cut the rounded tops from your cakes to make them flat and even. If you like you can also cut all the brownish crusts off the edge of the cake so it looks even prettier when sliced but that's totally up to you. If you not taking photo's of the slices I wouldn't bother.

Step 2. Make up your frosting, what ever type you like as long as it is firm enough to hold it's shape. For the cake in the pictures I used a Meringue Buttercream which is lovely and smooth and holds up ok as long as it's not the middle of a humid summer here in the sub-tropics. Color the frosting very light pink.

Step 3. Place a dollop of frosting into the middle of a cakeboard and press the bottom layer of the cake onto the frosting dollop so the cake does not move around.Spread a layer of frosting over the top of the cake and then press the second layer onto the top making sure the cake looks level.. Cover the top and sides of cake with frosting, make it kinda even and smooth but your going  to pop another layer on so don't go crazy.

Stick the cake into the fridge and let it set up while you color the remaining frosting.

Step 4. I started with the lighter color and just keep adding gel food color until I had all the colors I wanted. Remove about 2/6ths of the light pink frosting and place into your piping bag/ziplock bag and set aside.

Add a little more color until you have the next shade you want and remove 1/6th of that color into a piping bag/ ziplock bag and set aside.

Continue on until you have 5 different shades of pink. For the darker color I needed to add a touch of black and purple to the burgandy to get the color I wanted. Just a touch remember you can add more if it's not quite right but you can't take it out :)

Step 5. Once you have your 5 different colors remove the cake from the fridge. Use a ruler to measure the height of the cake and divide into 5 - mark around the cake at regular intervals with a knife. So for example if your cake was 12.5cm (5") high you would mark at 2.5cm (1") then 5cm (2"), then 7.5cm (3")and a final mark at 10cm (4"). # Note these measurement conversions are rounded

Step 6. Take the darkest color and cut the end of the disposable bag. Using the marks on the cake as a guide pipe a thick layer of frosting all the way around the cake. Repeat with all the graduated colors finishing with the lightest pink around the top, pipe a bit of extra frosting over the top of the cake. You might need to go back and fill in any big gaps at the end. Don't worry the finish does not need to look really neat.

Step 7 smooth the frosting

Step 7. Take your spatula and smooth around the edge of the cake. If you have a cake turntable you can spin it with one hand. Don't move the spatula up and down or you will smudge the colors into each other, if needed use paper towels to wipe excess frosting off the spatula to reduce smudging. Clean off the spatula and roughly smooth down the top of the cake.

OK so once again it doesn't need to be perfectly smooth - I know this is TOTALLY my type of cake decorating as well - check out the picture above to see how mine looked.

 Step 8 decorate the sides with short strokes using your spatula

Step 8. Next take a smaller knife or spatula and using short strokes around 5cm (2") and lifting the spatula completely off the cake at the end, make a rough pattern. Work around the cake on each color of frosting separately making sure the spatula/ knife is clean in between each layer. If you need to practice the technique do a few on the top of the cake. Frosting is pretty forgiving so you can go back and rework it as needed.

Step 9. Once you have finished all the layers on the sides use the same short stroke and lift technique on the top of the cake. I made these ones a bit smaller about 2.5 cm (1").

Step 9 decorate the top of the cake

For more easy to make recipes check out my book which is due for release in December, there are a stack of delicious small treat type recipes to make with your kids, ranging from super easy to more advanced.