How To: Making Fondant Roses

After making the beach scene cupcakes for a manager at work, I was asked by another coworker if I would make cupcakes for a party her daughter was having. Every year her daughter hosts a tea party for several girls before the start of school. It’s a very girly affair, complete with dresses and hats, and of course tea and fancy desserts. When I first heard about it, I thought of fun little Fancy Nancy type cupcakes for younger girls with lots of pink frosting and cute little butterfly toppers—until I realized her daughter was 17 and the girls she had invited were her classmates, not the kids she babysat. Maybe cute little butterflies wouldn’t go over so well. I decided to go the more mature route and make fondant roses instead. They’re elegant, pretty, and don’t look like they’re meant for a 4-year-old’s birthday cake. And best of all? They’re a whole lot easier to make than you think. Seriously. Let me show you.

(If any of the pictures are too small, just click on them to enlarge.)

1. Start by coloring your fondant. Smear a tiny bit of food coloring (I use Wilton gel coloring) onto about a ½-inch slice of premade white fondant you buy at the craft store (Also Wilton brand). A little coloring goes a long way, so start with a very little bit, because it’s much easier to darken it than it is to keep adding fondant to make it lighter.
2. Wearing a pair of gloves to keep from staining your hands, start kneading the color into the fondant. It’ll take a few minutes to get the color evenly distributed, so keep twisting and pulling and folding until the fondant is uniform in color.
3. Eventually you’ll end up with the perfect, even color! This should be enough fondant to make about a dozen small roses.


4. Lightly dust a clean work surface, as well as a rolling pin, with a small amount of confectioner's sugar or cornstarch. This will keep your fondant from sticking. With your rolling pin, roll the fondant out to about 1/8” thick. Using the small end of a large round piping tip, cut out circles to use as petals. You’ll need 8 petals for each rose. (If you don’t have a large round piping tip, use the bigger round end of any small piping tip, or anything you have that will give you an inch-wide circle.) Gather and reroll scraps as needed.
5. Using your fingers, flatten out each circle until it is slightly larger and thinner in size.


6. From your leftover fondant, pinch off a ½” size ball of dough. Rolling one end of the ball between your fingers, shape the ball into a cone. This will be the base of your rose.
7. Starting near the bottom, begin to wrap one petal around the cone. If the petal doesn’t stick to the cone on its own, lightly brush a small amount of water on the bottom of the petal to adhere.
8. Wrap the petal completely around the cone, overlapping one side of the petal over the other.


9. With the top edge slightly above the tip of the base petal and the center covering the base petal seam, wrap the second petal around base, brushing the petal lightly with a bit of water if it doesn’t stick on its own. The sides will almost touch.
10. Wrap the third petal around the base, with the center of the petal overlapping the right side of the previous petal.
11. Wrap the fourth petal the same way, with the center overlapping the right side of the previous petal. These petals will make the middle layer of your rose. If you wanted just a rosebud, you could stop here. To make a full rose, you’ll add one more layer to the outside.


12- 15. Add the last 4 petals around the outside of the bud in the same way you did before, slightly above the top edges of the previous layer, and starting with the center of the petal overlapping the right side of the previous petal.


16 and 17. Using your fingers, slightly pull down on the top edges of the outside petals, curling the petals slightly to give the rose an opened look.



18 and 19. The bottom of the rose will look odd with the different layers of petals showing at different levels. To remedy this, I simply cut the bottom part off at the lower edge of the outermost layer. Then I roll the bottom part slightly between my fingers to shape it and even it out.


20. And there you have it. A pretty, perfect fondant rose!


I made a dozen pink and a dozen white roses to top vanilla cupcakes with strawberry buttercream for the tea party. They were definitely very girly and from what I hear, the girls enjoyed them very much!