How to Make Fondant Waves on Cakes

I made a beach-themed birthday cake recently and made 2 types of fondant waves on the cake. One was 2D waves and the one I have on this page is more of 3D waves.

A two tier beach themed cake in blue, orange and yellow, with orange gum paste hibiscus and fondant surfboards

See the spirals on the cake? Those are the 3D waves I am talking about and will be covering on this page. I also have a tutorial for the 2D waves on the cake (the ones attached to the top and bottom tier of the cake) as well as the fondant surf boards and a separate tutorial on how to assemble the beach themed cake.

Lets get on to see how I made the 3D fondant waves below.

How to Make Fondant Waves on Cakes

These were the main supplies needed to make the waves:

Fondant - I used white Satin Ice fondant and colored it blue using Wilton Royal Blue food color.
CMC powder - I added CMC powder to the fondant above. CMC helps the fondant to set firm and hard and this helps the fondant to hold its shape better.
Extruder tool - my favorite tool for producing fondant rolls. I used a round disc to pipe out fondant rolls.
Waves template - I hand drew these. In drawing the waves, I measured the height of each tier to make sure the waves are of a height that matches the height of the cake. For this cake, I made 2 templates - one for the top tier and one for the bottom tier. These were my templates for the waves.
Shortening - I used shortening to grease my parchment paper template.
Fondant glue - I used this glue to stick the waves on my cake.

And this was how I formed and attached the waves to my cake:

First of all, I got my template ready. In making these templates, I measured the height of my cake tiers first. And then I drew the waves on a piece of paper. Next, I turned the paper over, and traced the waves pattern on the reverse side of the paper. After that, I took a clean sheet of parchment paper and traced the waves (from the reverse side on the first paper) onto my parchment paper.

Next, I turned the parchment paper over and stick to a cake board with some blue tag. The reason I turned the parchment paper over is to make sure the pencil marks on the paper do not get transferred to my fondant. And then I applied shortening on it so that the lines on the other side of the paper become visible.

Fondant waves paper template on a gold cake board

Next, I prepared my fondant. I added the blue food coloring and CMC powder and kneaded it well.

Light blue fondant with a bottle of blue food coloring on the side

And then, I filled it into my extruder tool fitted with a round disc.

Fondant extruder tool with light blue fondant

I then piped the fondant and arranged it following the lines on my templates.

Once done, I left the fondant waves aside to set.

2 sets of fondant swirls in blue, on white paper

Attaching the fondant waves to the cake

Once set, I remove the fondant, one by one to attach to the cake. To make sure the fondant waves stick strongly onto the cake, I used fondant glue instead of shortening because the waves were kind of heavy and shortening would not be able to hold them in place.

Using a brush to paint on a fondant swirl

I started with the smallest wave and finished with the tallest for each tier.

And while waiting for the fondant glue to dry and set, I used my food coloring bottles to hold the waves in place. See how I stacked the bottles to support my waves.

Once the glue was set, I removed the bottles. And this was how the completed cake looked like with the 3D waves on. Click here to learn how I assembled the rest of the cake together.

Hope you enjoyed this tutorial on how to make 3d fondant waves.

Happy Decorating 🙂