DIY Tutorial: Ombre Cake Icing

April 7, 2012

As I’m in the birthday spirit, what could be more celebratory than a big fat pink cake!? And with ombre being a wedding trend I’m still utterly loving, I thought this DIY from blog reader Heidi would be the perfect way to get the party started…

I’m Heidi, and I write the blog LittleMissLove. I work in Digital Marketing, drink too many iced lattes, and am also a pro hula hooper (more on that on the blog soon!) I write about things I love, and I love fashion, film photography, and getting crafty. I post a lot of mini DIY projects – pretty or tasty things you can make on a lazy sunday. It just so happens that my chap Dikki proposed to me over a home-made chilli just before New Years Eve, so since then most of my crafty projects have been some kind of trial run for the Big W. I’ve seen a lot of gorgeous ombre wedding cakes around t’internet recently, so here’s a how to if you want to try it out yourself!

Recently I met with my bridesmaids, to watch the awesome Bridesmaids film, drink cocktails and have a gossip. Of course, I need a cake for every occasion so I made a lemon sponge with blackcurrant jam in the middle. I tried out ombre icing for the first time – a gentle graduation of colour from light to dark. Here’s how!

Supplies Needed:

♥ Cake
♥ White Icing (can be bought ready made or you can home make some butter cream or cream cheese icing)
♥ Food Colouring in your choice of colour (I used red to make a white-pink-red ombre effect)
♥ Palette knife
♥ Spatula
♥ Bowl

Method:

Step One: Firstly, cover the cake in white soft icing, this is called a crumb layer, and it smooths out your palette. I cheated and bought a tub of Betty Crocker ready made frosting, since you can’t buy white butter in the UK (unlike the US) so you can’t make white buttercream at home. If you do want to go fully DIY just make a cream cheese frosting, that way it will stay nice and white (and it’s delicious!)

Step Two: Put a generous spoonful of white icing in the middle, then in a separate bowl mix a little red food colouring into your icing. It’s best to use a gel colouring, so that it doesn’t thin out the icing. Using a spatula place a messy circle of this light colour around the white, then add a bit more colour into your bowl, and do a final darkest layer.

Step Three: Get the thinnest rubber spatula you can find – mine is about 1″ across, but i could have done with one 1cm across for a better effect. Starting in the centre of the cake do a spiral all the way to the outside edge, done!This also looks amazing done around the outside of the cake too. I’m thinking this could make a lovely finish on the top tier, or as one part of a beautiful cake table spread.

What do you reckon?