For my sister’s Jack & Jill shower I wanted to bake something extra special, so I decided to try my hand at creating my very first ruffle cake. Now it took a little bit of trial and error to get the look I wanted, but creating your own ruffle cake is definitely very achievable.
1. The first step is to cover your cake with a thin layer of icing to seal in all of the crumbs. If you have time, it’s ideal to stick the cake in your refrigerator for a half hour or so to help firm up this outside layer.
2. Once your crumb coat is finished, you are ready to start piping ruffles. (If you are a perfectionist, you can add one more step at this point and can draw vertical lines spaced 1″ apart in the crumb coat to use as a guide for your ruffles. I opted to just eyeball it, which ended up causing some of my ruffle rows to be a tad bit uneven but in a cute undone sort of way).
4. Starting at the bottom of your first row (thick end of the tip towards the cake) move your icing tip back and forth, stacking the icing to build a vertical column reaching to the top of the cake.
5. Continue this process, creating 1″ columns surrounding the entire cake.
6. How you want to finish the top is up to you! I decided to continue the ruffle theme and used the same Wilton no. 102 tip for the top of the cake. Starting from the outside and working in, I worked my way around the cake moving the icing tip back and forth as I spiralled the icing in.
It’s just that easy! Now the biggest lesson I learned the hard way was this: Don’t try and finish frosting a ruffle cake all in one shot! As I got half way through piping ruffles, I realized they were becoming more messy and starting to droop. What was happening, is the icing bag began to warm with the heat of my hands. Once I realized this, I stuck the icing bag and the cake back in the refrigerator for 5-10 minutes and once again the icing held its shape and created the lovely ruffles I was looking for.
