There are many techniques and designs to achieve a beautiful ombre design on a cake. But when it comes to how to create a beautiful ombre effect on your cake, the possibilities are endless!
If you’re unfamiliar with the term “ombre”, this effect displays a gradual change in colour from dark to light. When done correctly, the finished product looks so mesmerizing!
With ombre cake designs, come various cake decorating techniques to achieve the same result. For buttercream frosted cakes, you can keep the buttercream frosting smooth or pipe rosettes. For fondant cakes, you can make layered waves or create a petal design. As long as you maintain a gradual change in colour, you’ll create a gorgeous ombre cake design.
I can’t even count how many ombre cakes I’ve made! It’s a very popular cake design, that I like to think I’ve become an expert 😛 So if you’ve never made an ombre cake, I’m here to help! I’m sharing some tips and designs for this stunning cake style.
HOW TO BLEND COLOURS FOR AN OMBRE CAKE
To create a flawless ombre transition from dark to light on a cake, it’s best to start with a base colour and slowly add white buttercream or white fondant to lighten it. You don’t want to make separate batches of different shades and just add different amounts of food colouring. You won’t get a seamless colour change.
For a buttercream ombre cake, start by mixing the darkest colour that you’ll be using on the cake. This colour will be added to the bottom of the cake. Once you’re done with the darkest colour, add a little bit of white buttercream frosting to lighten it. Apply this next shade to your cake and repeat the process.
Continue repeating until you’ve reached the last shade of your ombre cake (which would be really light, or sometimes people like to keep that last layer white).
Using the darkest buttercream colour as a base ensures you have the same colour tone and you’ll avoid making the same shade or a shade too similar.
Use the same process if you’re using fondant decorations for an ombre effect on your cake. Start with the darkest shade of the chosen colour, and keep adding white fondant as the fondant decorations move up the cake.
FONDANT OMBRE CAKE DESIGNS
Adding an ombre effect to your cake is already impressive, but you can bring your cake to another level with a beautiful design. Any cake design that is comprised of layers (like waves, scallops, and petals) can be turned into an ombre cake.
Use the colour blending tips we mentioned above to create a flawless ombre effect and you’ll be left with a gorgeous cake!
For cakes with multiple tiers, you can apply the ombre effect to the entire cake, or just one tier. Just make sure to combine cake designs that will complement each other. We talk more about multi-tier cake design in our post Creating A Cake With Multiple Tiers: Assembly and Design Ideas!
BUTTERCREAM OMBRE CAKE DESIGNS
Making an ombre cake with buttercream frosting is probably easier (and less time consuming) than making a fondant ombre cake. You can easily apply each layer and shade of buttercream frosting to your cake and smooth it out with a cake scraper. There are also special piping tips available to create different designs, like rosettes and ruffles.
Who knew there are so many possibilities to create one cake concept? So let’s go over some different cake decorating techniques!
OMBRE CAKE DECORATING TECHNIQUES
I previously mentioned piping each shade onto your cake, then smoothing it out with a cake scraper. I regularly use this technique when decorating ombre cakes, since it’s such an easy way to get those different shades on your cake!
You can also spread each shade of the desired colour into your cake with an offset spatula or palette knife. This takes a little bit longer than piping the buttercream, but you’ll achieve the same result!
There are a few other ombre cake decorating techniques and cake designs you can try. As always, we’re here to help you! Check out our tips below for decorating different ombre cake designs 🙂
RUSTIC CAKE/PALETTE KNIFE CAKE
You can easily replicate this design but piping each shade of buttercream frosting onto your cake. Smooth out the buttercream as usual with a cake scraper, then take a palette knife and slowly move it up the cake while slowly spinning the cake turntable.
Applying this rustic look with a palette knife or offset spatula creates an even more flawless blend of colours on your ombre cake!
Check out how we made this rustic “you are my sunshine” cake with a blue ombre 🙂
ROSETTE CAKES
I think rosettes are such a pretty touch to any cake! To make a rosette ombre cake, use the same colour blending technique, and start by piping a row of rosettes onto your cake. Add white buttercream to lighten the colour, then pipe the second row of the lighter shade. Lighten, pipe, repeat!
I like to use a closed star piping tip for rosettes, usually an 844 or 845 tip from Ateco. Rosette cakes require a lot more buttercream, so make sure to make enough of your base buttercream colour.
If you’re not comfortable with your rosette piping and worry about the cake showing behind the rosettes, you mask the cake first with a thin layer of buttercream so it’s not as obvious 🙂 Though, the trick to having full rosettes without the cake showing underneath is to finish piping each rosette into the space of the next rosette.
Instead of rosettes, you can also try making fondant roses and adding an ombre effect that way. There are a lot of easy-to-use rose silicone moulds available to easily make beautiful roses that are flat enough to stick onto a cake.
BUTTERCREAM SCALES
Instead of rosettes, you can make scaled cakes using a similar concept. Pipe the first row around the cake, lighten the colour with a bit of white buttercream, then pipe the next row.
To create scales, you’ll need a piping bag and a small round piping tip. There are 2 methods for creating scales. The first method involves piping a “blob” and sliding the tip to one side. Just like we did in this Instagram reel decorating a smash cake!
The second method uses an offset spatula. Instead of sliding the piping tip, pipe a “blob” and spread the buttercream from about halfway across the “blob” with the tip of a small offset spatula. Sorry, I keep using “blob” but I don’t know what else to call it LOL. Circle? Round? Blob it is!
RUFFLED CAKES
Buttercream Ruffles
A ruffled cake design can be made with both buttercream frosting and fondant! Both of which require a different technique and skillset. You’ll also need different cake decorating tools for fondant vs. buttercream.
To create ruffles with buttercream, use a petal tip and point the narrow part of the tip away from the cake. I like to use the 104 petal tip from Ateco.
I demonstrated this ruffled ombre buttercream technique on Instagram 🙂
Fondant Ruffles
To decorate a cake with fondant ruffles, you need a fondant ball tool and foam pad to transform the fondant. The fondant should be rolled out as thin as possible, then you won’t have to overwork the fondant edges with the ball tool. Also, the ruffles will look light and flowy – not heavy.
Feel free to take a look at our full list of fondant tools that will definitely make your life easier and your cakes look more professional 😉
FONDANT PETAL CAKES
If you’ve ever made a flower from gum paste or fondant, you’ll be very familiar with this cake decorating technique. When making petals, they need to be rolled out very thin – just like the fondant ruffles we discussed above.
To create an ombre petal effect, roll out fondant with a non-stick fondant rolling pin and cut out circles. To cut out the circles, you can use piping tips or a round cutter. With your ball tool, thin out the circles even more, and apply pressure to the edge of the circles to form petals. Make enough petals to cover a row or two of the cake, and move on to the next shade.
As we’ve discussed previously, when it comes to the shades of colour, start with the darkest colour. And continue to add white fondant as you move up the cake to make the shade lighter.
Apply all of your petals with a little bit of water or gum glue, overlapping each petal. You’ll end up with a gorgeous cake that looks like a flower!
SURPRISE OMBRE CAKE DESIGN
Ombre cakes don’t only have to be shown on the outside of a cake! You can also create an ombre effect on the inside of your cake or the “cake guts” as some may call it. If you’re baking a vanilla cake (or a cake light enough to dye), you can make an ombre cake with the cake layers! Dye each cake layer with different amounts of food colouring and voila!
Decorate the outside of the cake one way and surprise your guests with a hidden ombre effect inside the cake 🙂 But try to still create a design outside that will complement the ombre design inside.
You can switch it up and decorate the cake with ombre buttercream between the layers! Over the first cake layer, pipe the first shade of buttercream outlining the shape of your cake (ie. a circle for a round cake, a square for a square cake). And continue lightening the colour and piping each shade. When you cut into the cake, you’ll reveal the ombre buttercream!
There are so many creative ways to incorporate an ombre design on a cake! Have you made an ombre cake before? Which design did you create?
Happy ombre cake decorating!
Mich
thanks for sharing all the details. it will surely help who are learning to bake cakes
I would LOVE to learn to make a beautiful ombré cake for my kids birthdays. I love the ruffled cake. I feel like that would be a great first time cake to try and make.
Wow, this looks amazing!! The videos are super nice to watch 😉
I guess I need to practice more patience with this 😉
So many beautiful options using fondant, I’ve never made a cake with fondant before but thanks for the tips