Tutorial: Hand-painting pretty words onto fondant cake

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One of my favorite parts about the cake that I recently made for my mom’s birthday is the personalized things written on the fondant around the top layer. It made the cake special and it made my mom cry. Rock on.

However I was slightly terrified of actually writing onto the cake, since my handwriting tends to be messy and slanted without a line to write on. So I came up with a way to write on the cake in a pretty font. If it seems hard or intimidating, trust me, it’s not. And it actually went pretty quickly.

Check out the tutorial below. I hope you find it easy to follow. Feel free to ask questions if something isn’t clear.

1. I started off by measuring around the cake to see how much space I had. I got the length around and the height of the area I had to work in.

2. I created a box that was the size of the space I had to work with and wrote out what I wanted the cake to say. I used a program called Adobe Illustrator, but any kind of painting or drawing software that you can make a box and type text in will work.

Note: In the image above, the light grey text was actually changed to black before being printed so that it was easier to read.

3. Print out your text. I printed it in 3 sections, since it was longer than an 8.5 by 11 sheet of paper and then cut them down to the right size.

4. Mix some pearl dust with a little vodka to make your “paint.” I kept it fairly thick so it would show up better. I put the pearl dust on the edge of the plate with the vodka in the middle so I can just dip my brush in when I need more moisture.

5. Use your “paint” to trace the back of the words on the paper. It will be backwards (the word above is “birthday”). I did one word at a time, otherwise the “paint” would dry before I could get it onto the fondant.

6. Press the painted side of the paper onto the cake, making sure to place it in the right spot. Press down on the area where the “paint” is to get it to come off onto the fondant. It should give you just enough guidance to be able to go back and trace it with your paintbrush.

7. Trace over the word with darker paint and walah! You have beautifully done text painted onto your cake!

Another note: As I went along, one word at a time, I would cut off the word that I had previously done. Which is why you see a gap in the picture above. I had cut off the word “Happy”. I did that for 2 reasons:

1. I didn’t want to smudge the words that were already done.

2. If you cut it just on the edge of the previous word, you can line the edge of the paper up with the end of the word you last painted and you should get correct spacing between each word. I hope that makes sense.

Again, if you have questions, feel free to ask!

As always, thanks for reading!