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Baking a cake? Let a pastry chef teach you how to decorate it like a pro using fondant ribbon and bows you make yourself. It’s easy with the step-by-step instructions in this video.
Hi, my name is Amanda Oakleaf. I am owner, head baker, decorator of Amanda Oakleaf Cakes in Winthrop, Massachusetts where we do custom cakes of all kinds — wedding cakes, birthday cakes, sculpted cakes. Anything you can think of we can make it into a cake. And today I will be talking to you about cake decorating. So we have our airbrushed cake and now we’re going to add a ribbon around the base and a little bow in the front. So we have our color. We’re going to give it a little bit of a knead and we want to sprinkle a little corn starch. That’ll keep it from sticking to the table, and we’re going to roll out a long strip so start with the shape that we want. We want a long ribbon. So that should be long enough to wrap around the cake. We have this fancy tool, it’s a scissoring roller cutter and it allows you to cut a strip very easily. To make it look like fabric we have another roller that has a zigzag edge that will add stitch marks. You could also add polka dots. You could also have a texturing mat to give different looks to your ribbon. To glue it onto the side we have a mixture of water and meringue powder. We’ll start with a flat edge, and you can cradle the ribbon so it doesn’t stretch with your other arm and just apply it with your other arm as you spin it around. When you get to the end you can use your exacto tool and cut along right where it meets. There’ll be a little seam but we can cover that up with the bow. So that’s our ribbon, and then to make the bow you want to cut out a shape where it’s skinnier in the middle and wider where the bow edges will be and then a little skinnier towards the middle again. So it’s kind of like an untied bow tie. That looks how I like it. We want a little bit of glue in the middle here because that’s where the two ends are going to stick together, and then I also like to glue a little bit on the outside of these because that’s where they’re going to scrunch up into a bow. So put that in the middle, and the other one. A little bit of glue, and then you want to scrunch it up as if it was tied and you can create a couple folds to make it look like it is fabric. Give it a good pinch. So that’s the basic bow. I like to put it on a foam. That allows it to dry a little faster and keep it from drying too flat. Then we want a strip to cover the middle so on your extra, cut a little piece that’s wide enough and you want it to extend and wrap around the back as well. Flip it over, a little glue on the back. Flip it over, with your exacto tool cut off the extras. Then you want to just let it dry half an hour to an hour. That will stiffen up and we’ll be able to place it right on the side of our cake.