Cake toppers take your cakes to the next level by adding height and colour and detail. Here are 10 easy cake toppers to use for your cakes.
Make colourful cherries by dipping cherries into melted chocolate and then pressing into a bowl of sprinkles. Non pareils or hundreds and thousands are perfect for this because they’ll give you full coverage over the chocolate and not much texture when you bite into them.
For glittered cherries use glaced or candied cherries. They’re sticky so you can dip them into a jar of luster dust or edible glitter and it will stick to the cherry to cover it completely. This will make them colourful and also shimmery or metallic!
These look so pretty and showstopping when they’re nestled into piping on a cake.
Make custom cake toppers with chocolate and sprinkles. You can use white chocolate or dark chocolate or whatever kind you like. Melt chocolate in the microwave for 30 seconds at a time using 80% power so it doesn’t burn or seize. Stir until it’s smooth and then spoon the chocolate into a sandwich bag. Cut a tiny piece off one of the bottom corners of the bag to squeeze the chocolate through. Then draw a design or write a message onto a piece of baking paper, parchment paper or wax paper.
Make the lines as thick as you can, while still being legible. This way they’ll be strong and less likely to snap than if they’re thin. Push a toothpick into the bottom of each section and cover it up with some more chocolate. The lines don’t need to be neat or smooth because you'll cover them up in a minute.
Next, pour sprinkles or coloured sugar on top, pressing down gently to attach them to the melted chocolate. It’s good idea to do this on a cake board or a tray so that you can lift it up and put it into the freezer. The chocolate needs to set and it will be strongest when it’s cold. After about 5 minutes you can pick up the toothpicks to lift up the chocolate and it won’t break.
Then push the chocolate into the cake. The toothpicks will secure the chocolate so that it stands up straight. This is such an easy way to make fun, colourful cake toppers!
Create cake toppers using ingredients that match your cake flavour. For example, I'm using fresh berries to match the filling and frosting on this cake.
If the frosting on the cake has already set, it won't be sticky anymore and the toppers won't stick to it. You’ll need to spread fresh frosting wherever you want to place the toppers to act as glue to attach them.
If the frosting hasn’t set yet, you can press the toppers straight onto it. These are cookie dough balls on my cookie dough cake, which has cookie dough filling and brown sugar frosting. Yum!
When the frosting is still soft, notice that the weight of cake topper can make the frosting bulge. Instead, it's best to chill the cake before adding any cake toppers.
Fresh flowers make stunning cake toppers almost effortlessly! First, do a quick Google search to make sure the flowers you want to use aren't toxic. Wash and dry the flowers and cut the stems an inch of two below the flowers. Group them together to make small clusters. Wrap the stems with cling film or Saran Wrap so that no liquids seep out into your cake.
Now push the wrapped stems into a straw and cut the straw so it’s barely longer than the stems. Then push these into your cake, using scissor blades to push them all the way in. Or you can push just the straw in first and then poke the stems into it next. Fresh flowers are simple but stunning!
Another option is to use artificial flowers. They won’t wilt so you can arrange them on a cake in advance and they'll still look perfect the next day. Also, you don’t have to worry about any floral juices oozing into your cake. It's still a good idea to wrap the stems so they're food safe before pushing them into the cake.
You can skip the straws if you don’t have any but they make it easier to push the flowers in and to remove them later.
Use macarons or candies to add height and detail to the tops of your cakes. This is a great way to match a colour scheme! You can make the macarons or buy them from a bakery or even from a supermarket or grocery store.
If you’ve just frosted your cake, the frosting will still be soft so decorations will stick to the frosted cake. If the frosting on the cake has already set, attach toppers by spreading or piping a dot of buttercream first. This will act as glue to secure them so they don’t fall over when you move the cake.
Make your own delicious donuts to use as cake toppers! Pipe extra cake batter into a silicon donut mold and bake for the same time as you would bake cupcakes, 14-17 minutes.
After cooling, dip them into ganache. Ganache is easy to make with three times as much white chocolate as cream. You can tint this with oil based colours or buy coloured candy melts to use instead of white chocolate.
Add any decorations like sprinkles straight away, while the ganache is still soft and sticky. Push a toothpick or two toothpicks into the donut and then push the toothpicks into the cake. The toothpicks will support to donut so that it stays upright and in place.
Use toy figures like cars or cartoon characters as cake toppers on themed cakes. It's much less time consuming than making the figures out of buttercream or chocolate or fondant. Also, for children’s characters, figures are more easily recognizable than your own version.
Just like with other toppers, they won’t stick to frosting that’s already set. If a buttercream cake has been in the fridge you’ll need to use fresh buttercream as glue on the cake topper.
Use cookies like Oreos as cake toppers by arranging them around the top of a cake. Push them gently down into the frosting or into a drip on top of the cake. Space them evenly and then pipe swirls in between them.
The cookies will keep the swirls the same width and, if you keep an eye on the top of the cookies, you can pipe every swirl to be the same height, too!
You can buy cake toppers for any occasion like birthdays or baby showers. The message will be more visible than if you pipe it because it stands upright. Push it into the cake after transporting because the vibrations of a car will wiggle it and make the hole in the cake bigger and visible around the stick of the cake topper.
Which cake topper are you going to try next? Tell me in the comments! And visit my cake school to learn hundreds of cake decorating techniques and designs with individual courses or a membership for access to everything, which you can try out with a FREE 7 day trial!
You can also watch a video of this tutorial on 10 easy cake toppers:
