I am designing a wedding cake inspired by the attached picture. Is the scrollwork fondant? Royal icing? How was this technique done over satin ribbon without staining or causing marks? Any advice would be appreciated.

seems strange to put that sort of embellishment over ribbon. looks like chocolate to me.

Looks like piped chocolate or RI. Not sure if either one would cause marks, but you could test and see. I would guess chocolate might because of the cocoa butter, but RI might not because it's grease free.

It looks like chocolate but it could be RI with a larger tip also. cool design.

The ribbon may be floral ribbon which is water proof and will resist stains

Chocolate was my guess too. And I would agree it was probably floral ribbon that won't stain.

Beautiful design, in the floral industry this is known as paper ribbon.

My first thought it was cut with chocolate fondant and a cricut.

Hi, my thoughts are that it is royal icing in brown as it holds its shape very well. Unfortunately dark colours on white icing are very hard as they stain so if you make a mistake it shows. A way round this is to pipe the design first in white in a much smaller tube then go over in the darker RI. Or another way is to put the design on tracing paper and scratch the design through with a scribe onto the fondant once the fondant has dried well. it will leave behind the design and then you can use it as a guide to pipe straight on with the darker colour. It looks like normal satin ribbon. I've pipped dots over ribbon before once it is attached to the cake
happy decorating - its a lovely design and colour

I agree with it being florist ribbon. We use that kind in funeral work usually and it's interesting to see it on a cake. It's pretty! As for the icing, do you think it's possible it could have been done off the cake and then applied like an applique? I can't really see it in detail on my screen, but maybe they could have piped it onto a freezer paper and then let it dry before peeling it off and sticking it on? It's a beautiful cake at any rate.

Thanks, everyone! I'm not sure how I'm going to approach this yet. I better figure it out soon as the wedding is next Saturday, the 17th.

The design is a buttercream base with satin ribbon and the piping was done in ganache. This cake is featured in the gallery of the bakery that did my wedding cake and they advertise that ALL of their cakes are done in bc, they don't use fondant, and the only colors they will use in their frosting is the natural off white, pink (achieved by mixing in raspberry juice) and chocolate ganache.

So there ya go!

Rose_N_Crantz thank you so much for the information! I've never piped with ganache so I'll need to practice that first. The designer did an amazing job on the piping.

I'll bet it's thin fondant and/or gumpaste cut with scroll cutters. The August newsletter from Sugardelites.com showed several photos that one individual made using some of their scroll cutters. Go to their website and see if you can pull up their newsletter. Or, I can e-mail my copy to you.

Good luck :>)

I've read on here that people spray their satin ribbon with vegetable spray or cooking oil before placing it on the cake, so any other oil stains won't show up on the ribbon. It will just be slightly darker than the original color.

This cake is thankfully for my niece. I'm going to strongly encourage her not to take the design over the ribbon. She's decided to incorporate some additional design elements. Therefore, I'm hoping to modify the design to where it will work eaiser for me. I'm doing this cake out of town so the less complicated, the better.