INSTRUCTIONAL

SPONGE-PAINTED OMBRÉ

TOOLS

pre-prepared cake

Magnolia Kitchen turntable

powdered food colour

paint palette

rose spirit

dropper

paint brushes for mixing

various sponges (I am using some face-paint application sponges, but any sponge will be fine as long as it’s brand-new and doesn’t come with cleaning products on it)

Magnolia Kitchen cake detailing palette knife

paper towel

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: cake should be treated like a canvas. Granted it may be an edible one, but it’s a canvas nonetheless.

Creating art on cake is limitless, so don’t allow society to tell you what is and what isn’t a cake tool or a cake-design technique. Just like working on a real canvas, the tools and techniques are transferable.

Of course this sponge technique is nothing revolutionary in the art and DIY world. I remember doing something similar to this in high-school art class, but obviously on paper and fabrics. I think it’s most commonly used on wallpaper and furniture these days but hey, you know me—everything looks like a cake technique haha.

What I love about this technique is that you can really get some layers going. You can follow my example here and add multiple colours, using the sponge to blend these together slightly where they overlap. Or you can simply start with a cake in a base colour and use the sponge to overlay another colour. A dark-grey base with a sponged white colour on top would give an awesome old-stone look. You could even use multiple shades of white, grey and black to give a cool industrial finish.

I actually used this technique in my Japanese-inspired design, but I changed it up slightly by using runny ganache as my ‘paint’ to sponge onto the cake. It turned out looking EPIC, and gave the design the extra texture and realism I was aiming for to depict the stone look.

One of the things I hope y’all are learning about me as you read this book is my love for taking traditional art and applying it to cake.

Enough of the chitchat for now: let’s get down to ombré action.

1. I am using a two-tiered cake prepared with my ‘ganache on ganache’ technique with raw-textured edges (see here).
2. Prepare your tools and get your paints ready. I used powdered food colour, and I chose to do navy blue and gold for this design.
3. Prepare your paints by adding small amounts of powdered food colour to your palette and wetting to a wet paste using drops of rose spirit (use the dropper). Rose spirit is great for painting on cakes, as it evaporates and leaves just the paint behind.
4. Using a dry sponge, dab on your first colour. I started with the navy blue at the bottom, planning to ombré up to a mustard with gold metallic. Don’t worry if you make a mess on the cake board—this can be cleaned later.
5. Keep dabbing with the sponge, adding more colour around the bottom of the cake. It’s like layering—you want it to be more layered and deeper in colour at the bottom.
6. Once you have a solid level of colour around the bottom of the cake, go around again a bit higher, this time keeping it a touch lighter with less layering. Repeat this as you move up the cake, adding less colour and less layering each time.

7. I like to keep going back to the bottom to layer it up more as I move up, so I get a more defined ombré with a clear fade from dark to light. Here I stopped with the first colour two-thirds of the way up the first tier.
8. When you are happy with the ombré transition of your first colour, move on to your second colour—I chose a metallic mustard.
9. Using the same dabbing method, start by layering your second colour slightly over the first colour so that they meet and overlap slightly.
10. Now move up with your second colour—you want to layer it more around the TOP of the cake, just like you did with the first colour on the bottom of the cake.
11. Layer layer layer.
12. Remember to take the colour up onto the top of the first tier before moving up to the second tier.

13. Now take the second colour up on to the second tier. Here I wanted it to extend only one-third of the way up this tier. As you get to where you are happy to stop, start to dab more lightly so as to thin out the ombré and fade it up the cake. See how I have moved back down with the mustard over the navy too, and added in a touch of metallic gold to give some pizazz.
14. Time to clean the mess made on the board! Grab your palette knife and a paper towel.
15. Fold the paper towel over the tip of the palette knife, then dampen the paper towel with rose spirit.
16. Hold the point of the palette knife flat against the board so that it is nearly touching the cake, and wipe gently. This will leave you with a sleek, clean board with tidy edges right up to the cake.