Waves

Posted by Carolinedoodles

I received many requests from fellow sugar crafters on the technique I used to make the waves on my dolphin cake so here goes. Apologies for the rushed and not so polished quality of this tutorial, I was aiming to get this out as some of the inquiries were from people who wanted to see the technique so they could replicate it over the weekend. As with many of the effects out there, I was messing around looking for different ways of doing waves and came up with this idea by chance. Hope you all have fun replicating it for your projects.

List of Materials

• Sugar paste/fondant, Royal Icing, Sugar Glue, Comb modelling tool, comb, brush

Colour some white sugar paste/fondant with smudges of ice blue paste colouring but don't blend in fully. Use any method you normally adopt for a marbling effect and cover your cake with the marbled fondant.

Roll out a small sausage of the marbled paste /fondant taking care not to completely blend in the colours and using the fleshy part of your palm, flatten the paste.

Using a comb or comb modelling tool drag the flattened part of the fondant towards you in irregular lines so that the edge isn't even but take care to keep the edge fairly firm as it needs to stay up when placed on the cake.

With a sharp knife cut a strip of the textured paste and slip the knife under the flattened/textured paste to lift it off without breaking the edges or creasing it too much.

Using some sugar glue (CMC added to a little hot water will make a nice glue that can be used for all sugar work) on the straight part of the textured piece attach the piece to the cake. Set this piece on the cake teasing the edges to replicate movement and let this dry a little. This should be dry by time you have completed the rest of the cake.

Using the comb/comb tool drag the icing from the join so the pattern continues on to the cake and makes the join appear seamless. This isn't absolutely essential but looks neat.

Next mix up a little Royal Icing that is at a stiff peak consistency and pipe the icing on to the tips of the waves in an irregular fashion. You can also pipe some of the icing directly on to the join of the wave and one the cake itself so it appears like foam.

Using a damp medium round tipped brush drag the piping from the tips downwards as you would for brush embroidery.

Pipe some of the royal icing on the cake and again using the brush embroidery method drag the lines inward to create the foamy effect. Repeat the waves and the brush work around the entire cake. You can use the same waves to conceal any fondant supports you use for your figures on the top of the cake. Good luck and happy wave making :-)