Gold Fondant Lace

I made this gold fondant lace for a square wedding cake. It's all hand made, meaning I formed the lace by hand, using fondant. After that, I airbrushed it gold and then attached each individual component onto the cake.

It took me more than a day to get this lace done and put on the cake. And that was not because it was difficult to make. It was simply because the fondant needed time to set before I could transfer it onto the cake. The lace itself did take a few hours to form but the end result, once it was put on the cake, made every minute spent on making the lace worth it!

The trick in getting this right is to make sure that fondant lace pieces are all set and completely dry before being attached to the cake.

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How to Make Gold Fondant Lace

These are the supplies I used to make the gold fondant lace:

• Lace template - I drew the template by hand. When drawing the template, make sure the height and the length fit the size of your cake.
• Parchment paper - My template was drawn with a marker pen, hence I place the parchment over the design when forming the lace so that the fondant does not touch the marker pen ink on the paper.
• Fondant - I used Satin Ice "ivory" fondant. Ivory highlights the gold tone better than the white fondant.
• Clay extruder - I used this tool to make the fondant strips for the lace. It not only helps in saving time from having to roll the fondant strips by hand, it also helps to produce consistent-sized strips.
• Shortening - This was the 'glue' for the fondant lace. I used it to attach the lace pieces on the cake. I also used shortening when forming the lace on the parchment paper. A thin coat of shortening helps the fondant lace detach easily from the parchment paper once they were set and dry.
• Airbrush - I used an airbrush to color the fondant lace gold. It was definitely faster compared to hand painting as the amount of lace to be painted was quite a bit. Also, airbrushing helped in providing a smooth finishing for the gold color on the lace.
• Gold sheen airbrush color - I used Americolor Gold Sheen color and love the way the color turned out on the lace.

And here is how I made it:

The fondant lace template

• First and foremost was the lace template. I drew mine by hand. I also made a few copies of it so that I could work on all the lace pieces on the same day.
• Once you have the template ready, tape each template to a cake board. Then place a sheet of parchment paper over the designs. These papers can be secured in place with blue tack.

• After that, brush the parchment paper with a thin coating of shortening. I used shortening so that the fondant lace pieces detach easily from the paper once they were ready to be put on the cake. Also, having shortening on the paper helps to keep the fondant pieces in place while you work on the fondant lace.

Piping and forming the lace

• To pipe the lace, use a small circle disc for the clay extruder.

• In forming lace, start with designs on the inside of each lace piece. These pictures below show how I did it, step by step:

Painting the lace gold

• Once the lace is done, airbrush it in gold. I used Americolor Gold Sheen paint.
• If you notice, I did not complete the middle section of the lace. This was because the center of the lace should be at a 90 degrees angle as it will be placed on the side corner of the cake. As such, it must be formed curved at a 90 degrees angle.

Lace for the cake corners

• To make the middle section of the lace, trace the pattern onto another paper. Fold it into half and tape it to a Styrofoam block. Do it such that it is curved at a 90 degrees angle. 

• Tape a piece of parchment paper over the design, form the lace and airbrush it.  

Attaching the fondant lace to the cake

• Leave the lace pieces aside overnight to set and for the paint to dry. The next day, you can start to assemble the lace on your cake. 
• For a guide, I used the same lace template. I folded it into half and placed it on the cake, exactly where I wanted the lace to be.

• To make sure the template stayed in place, you can use shortening to stick it to the cake. 

• Next, using a needle tool, poke tiny holes on the template. Make sure it pokes the fondant underneath too, marking the main points of the lace.  

• Remove the paper and apply shortening where the holes are marked.

• And then start attaching the lace. Start with the middle section of the lace, from the bottom.

• Once the center is complete, move to the sides. Where the lace pieces are not sticking well on the cake, apply some shortening directly on the lace pieces. This will help them stick securely on the cake.

• Since I made this lace for a 3 tier cake, I completed both sides of the lace. After that, I repeated the process for the other 2 tiers of the cake as well. Here's how the gold fondant lace looked on the cake when completed.

And that was how I made gold fondant lace.

Hope you enjoyed this tutorials as much as I enjoyed making it.