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5 Minute Cake Decorating: Frosting Ruffles

Let’s decorate a cake in 5 Minutes! This technique creates gorgeous texture with just a piping bag and a piping tip.

If you prefer to watch a video of this tutorial, scroll to the bottom of the page.

All you need is a piping bag and a petal piping tip, which is one of these with a narrow end and a wide end. This is a #104 by Wilton and it’s perfect for my little four inch cake but for larger cakes you can choose a larger petal tip, for example a #125.

petal tip piping tip 5 Minute Cake Frosting Ruffles

To fill your bag with buttercream I like to drop the bag with the piping tip down into a glass and fold the top over the rim of the glass. This way, your hands will stay clean when you grip the piping bag later.

how to fill a piping bag 5 Minute Cake Frosting Ruffles

Spoon some buttercream into the piping bag. I’m using my 4 Minute Buttercream. You really don’t need much for this technique so don’t fill the bag more than half full.

how to fill a piping bag with frosting 5 Minute Cake Frosting Ruffles

Unfold the bag to lift it out of the glass and twist the end of the bag to push the buttercream down into the tip of the bag and to apply pressure to it while you’re piping. You’ll notice that there’s a wide and narrow end of the tip and that’s important for the next step.

twist piping bag before piping buttercream frosting 5 Minute Cake Frosting Ruffles

The rest piping tip down on the cake board with the wide end pressed against the side of the cake and the narrow end sticking out slightly. Squeeze the piping bag and slowly pull the bag up the side of the cake to pipe a ruffle.

rest piping tip on cake board before piping up the side of the cake 5 Minute Cake Frosting Ruffles

When you get to the top of the cake, release your pressure on the bag as you swipe it away and that will leave a neat end to the top of the ruffle. Pipe another ruffle beside the first ruffle so that it overlaps the first ruffle, covering up the base of the ruffle, which is the edge that came through the wide part of the piping tip.

how to pipe ruffles onto a cake 5 Minute Cake Frosting Ruffles

You can pipe the ruffles straight up the side of the cake or at a diagonal, which is what I’m doing here. The more slowly you move the bag upwards, the more ruffly the piping will be.

piping ruffles with buttercream frosting 5 Minute Cake Frosting Ruffles

You can exaggerate the ruffles even more by wiggling your wrist slightly as you pipe, to create more movement in the ruffles. I like to chill the cake in the fridge for an hour before piping onto it so that the frosting on the cake has set, which means you can drag the piping tip along the frosting without damaging it. By pressing the tip against the frosting, your ruffles will be securely attached to the frosting and that will make them more stable.

layered ruffles with buttercream frosting 5 Minute Cake Frosting Ruffles

I love this technique because the only thing you have to remember is to keep the wide end of the piping tip pressed against the cake, because it’s the narrow end that creates the ruffles so you want that end to be sticking out. But other than that, you can move the bag as fast or slow as you like to make the ruffles as smooth or wiggly as you like, and you really can’t go wrong with this.

petal tip ruffles with buttercream frosting 5 Minute Cake Frosting Ruffles

If you’ve enjoyed this tutorial you’ll LOVE my classes, where I teach unique cake designs broken down into four manageable steps in less than 20 minutes of video modules. Join my ClubPLUS for access to every class and course on my online cake school!

textured ruffles on buttercream cake 5 Minute Cake Frosting Ruffles

Here’s the video version of this tutorial:

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