Ombre Ribbon Cake

Looking through my photos of this cake, I realize that I did not take great photos to do a tutorial... But I'm still going to try to explain this process the best I can because this cake was so much fun to make and it looks beautiful! 

First things first, bake and frost your cake. The layer of frosting underneath your ombre ribbons doesn't have to be perfect. Just try to get a nice shape so that the ribbons lay flat. I left the top of my cake white, so I did try harder to smooth that out as best as I could. Oh and if you're wondering what frosting recipe I use... 

3 cups powdered sugar
1 cup salted butter, room temperature 
1 tsp vanilla
1-3 TBSP heavy whipping cream (add 1 then check consistency, add more if frosting is too thick)

For this cake I had to triple that recipe and I barely had enough.... It seems like I can never make the "right" amount of frosting. Either I don't have enough or I have SO much that I fill 3 Tupperware containers with frosting, put them in my fridge, and throw them out when they start to mold... *Heavy sigh* OK back to the cake. After I frosted my cake with white frosting, I grabbed my blue food coloring and put in one drop, mixed it up, and I had this beautiful mint light green color. I put my cake on a cake board (from michaels) and a turn table (also from michaels, but I would really love a nice metal one!) and prepared my bag and tip. If you've never done ribbon piping let me tell you this, it is not as hard as it may look!!! All you will need rose petal tip (the large size) and a piping bag. I filled the piping bag with my nice mint color frosting and piped on two rows of ribbon. Make sure when you're piping the fat part of your tip is facing down, and the thin part is facing up. Again, I don't know why I didn't photograph this! I also practiced on a piece of wax paper before starting on the cake (you only get one chance with the cake). 

Petal tip

After the first two rows, I added another drop or two of my food coloring, mixed the frosting, put it in my bag (making sure to squeeze the frosting out enough to get the first color all the way out) and started my next row. Look I have a picture of this! I started with my tip a little below where my last row ended. Then I moved the tip up and down, while turning the cake. Making sure that my ribbons stayed close together. They aren't perfect, but remember, you will add more layers underneath, so no one will notice any small imperfections! 

Oooo See that! my ribbons started going down further, but when the cake was done, even I couldn't see that small flaw. 

Notice the frosting all over my hands. I can not make a cake with out covering myself in frosting. Is it just me? Or does everyone end up with frosting all over them? 

 After I piped two rows with the light blue, I added more food coloring and piped another tow rows. For my last row I had to add about 4-5 drops of coloring to get a darker color and I only had room for one row. 

Once the cake was finished I realized that it looked like it could be a FROZEN cake!!! I sprinkled the top with edible sparkles and thought "now I just need an Elsa and Anna to put on top!". I loved making this cake, and I would love to try making it with other ombre colors! 

The cake was delicious!