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How To Make a Ruffle Cake

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I’m generally not a frilly type person, but when it comes to cakes-I want my frill! In this case I got my fix with a ruffle cake. This is a little bit of a variaion on this hugely popular version. My quest for a ruffle cake started with this one—wow, right? As many of you know I’m working on my cake carving skills, so while I can’t pull a Maggie Austen, I did pull off a vertical ruffle cake.

Ruffle Cake

It’s actually very simple and only requires piping a straight a line and applying the right amount of pressure. And if I can do it, anyone can.

Below is a quick tutorial with step-by-step pictures for how to make a ruffle cake.

A few notes:

  • Make sure you have a gripper of some sort between the cakestand and the turntable. You definitely don’t want the cakestand bobbling around while you spin it.
  • For an awesome tutorial to frosting a cake before you start ruffling, click here and here. The latter is a really useful video a reader left on another post for me. Thanks Heather!
  • Here is a tutorial on the Martha Stewart Ruffle Tower. For another ruffle variation, check out this one.
  • For an alternate finishing top click here-there’s also my favorite chocolate cake recipe in that post as well.

Ruffle Cake Tutorial

Directions:

  1. Fit a pastry bag with Wilton’s #104 tip. Then fill the pastry bag with frosting. I used my Vanilla Swiss Meringue Buttercream. Definitely remove your frosting paper strips before you start ruffling. I know-basic, but I forgot on my first run and ended up with a sloppy bottom edge. If you do happen to forget, refrigerate the cake and let the frosting chill then remove it. That will minimize the messy edges.
  2. Hold the bag with long tip down. Position hand with pastry bag at a 45 degree angle.
  3. Apply firm pressure as you move from bottom to top. ***Important note: If you are new to piping with this tip, practice on the side of a glass before you go for the cake. This way you will know what “firm” pressure is for you.
    If you don’t apply enough pressure the frosting will come out straight instead of ruffled. Make sure to finish each ruffled line over the top edge of the cake. Continue to overlap each ruffled line sighly until side of cake is coverered. Scrape top clean and even of any ruffled edgeds then finish top as desired.

Comments

  2. Kaitlin says

    Beautiful! I like your version better than the one on MS’s site. It’s cleaner and more feminine-looking. Great work! Thanks, again, for the link 🙂

    Also, I’m SO happy you linked to Maggie Austen’s page. I’ve seen her cakes before on Pinterest, but they’ve never properly linked. I didn’t realize they were all from the same person!

  11. Courtney says

    Love it! Have been wanting to try this piping technique for a while now but haven’t had an excuse 😉 I do have a question though…I’m sure it will be pretty clear when I actually attempt this, but just how do you get the top edge nice and clean without disturbing and smashing the top of the ruffles?

  15. Ela says

    Wow! I love the new ruffle design. At least it isn’t using a ton of buttercream like the other previous designs. Your cake looks so dainty. Thanks from doing it step-by-step. It helps a lot.

  17. Naomi says

    Hi Courtney – To clean the top use a bench scraper and drag the the ruffling to the center of the top and use an icing spatula to smooth out the whole top.

  22. Ann P. says

    This is really stunning! i love the step-by-step pictures–you make it look so easy! To frost a standard 9-inch, 2-layer cake, would you say it takes about one batch of your swiss meringue buttercream, or more?

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