Fondant Loop Bow Tutorial

Fondant loop bow on a cake may look daunting to make, but really is not that bad. In fact, if you know the right techniques, this bow is quite easy to make.

And as you can see in the image below, I used two different colors for the bow and the width of these two fondant ribbons also vary, with the purple ones being slightly wider than the brown ones.

How to Make Fondant Loop Bow

These are the main supplies required for the fondant loop bow:

Fondant in your choice of colors. Here, I used my homemade fondant and tinted it purple and dark brown. My homemade fondant dries hard and stable and therefore does not require any CMC to help it harden better. If you intend to use store-bought fondant, you will need to knead some gum tex or CMC powder into it. You can also mix fondant and gum paste (1:1 ratio) or use gum paste entirely. The choice is yours.
Pizza cutter/fondant trimmer
Ruler
Rolling pin
Royal icing in purple
A round container (the diameter of the container will determine the diameter of your finished fondant bow, so choose a container size that will match the size of your top tier cake. Also, choose a container that is at least three quarters the height of your fondant bow – this important because the container actually helps to keep the fondant loops in place (and not slide off) while the royal icing that holds the loops together sets and hardens )
A plastic sheet
Some warm boiled water and a brush

And this is how I assembled the fondant loop bow:

Roll out fondant and cut thin strips. Now, I am not specifying the length of the strips here but a general rule of thumb is to follow the diameter of the round container I mentioned above.

Take each fondant strip, dampen the ends with a damp brush.

Using a small brush at the tip of a long fondant strip in violet

Join both ends of the strip to form a loop as shown.

A long strip of fondant folded into a loop

Continue making the loops until you have quite a number of them. It's always better to make some extras to give allowance for breakages.

If you are using more than one color for your bow, repeat the steps above until you have enough loops. Leave the loops overnight to set.

Assembling the fondant bow

Once set, take your container. Line it with a plastic sheet. Make sure the plastic sheet is larger than the container.

A piece of plastic sheet in a round white container

Pipe a reasonable sized dot of royal icing in the middle of the container.

A blob of violet icing in a white container lined with plastic sheet

Take four of the purple loops and arrange them in a cross pattern in the container. Make sure each strip touches the royal icing piped earlier. Then pipe some more royal icing in the middle and arrange another four loops in between the earlier loops.

A round round of violet fondant loops in a plastic lined white container

Next, pipe another small dollop of icing in the middle.

This time arrange four brown loops as shown below.

A round row of brown and violet fondant loops in a plastic lined white container

Follow up with another round of 4 purple loops in between the brown ones.

Repeat the process until you have a nice round arrangement of the loops. Alternate the different colors loops evenly throughout the bow.

Leave the fondant loop bow in the container for a few hours or until the royal icing sets and hardens. Once set, carefully lift the plastic sheet out of the container. You may want to do this step very carefully to avoid the loops from breaking. Gently peel of the plastic sheet from underneath the loop bow.