Here are eight fall cake ideas for different cakes to try this season! Some are all about flavour, some use fun cake decorating techniques, and some combine both.
From apple pie, pumpkin spice and chocolate pistachio to buttercream mosaics, flowers and an over-the-top vintage Halloween cake, recreate these fall cake ideas or use them as inspiration for your own versions!
Let’s start with apple pie, but in cake form!
This cake combines vanilla cake with brown sugar buttercream, homemade apple pie filling and crumbled shortbread cookies for the pie crust. The cake is assembled inside a ring of acetate so that all of those gorgeous layers stay visible.
You can bake three round cake layers for this or for a quicker option, bake a sheet cake and then use a cookie cutter to cut two circles and two semicircles out of your cake. Place the first circle inside an acetate ring and spread brown sugar buttercream on top. Add apple pie filling and a layer of crumbled shortbread cookies. Then pipe another swirl of buttercream to act as glue. Arrange the two semicircles on top to make the next cake layer. Repeat the brown sugar buttercream, apple filling and cookie crumbles before adding the final cake layer and toppings.
Chill the cake until the buttercream is firm and then peel away the acetate to reveal all of those layers. You get the flavours and textures of apple pie, but in a cake. And you don’t even have to frost the sides! Get the apple pie cake recipe.
For a completely different fall cake decorating idea, this cake uses lots of piping textures and colours but all of the colours are layered inside just one piping bag.
Spoon different colours of buttercream into one piping bag with no piping tip. Then put your piping tips into separate empty piping bags and drop the bag of coloured buttercream into one of them.
As you pipe, the colours gradually push through each other to create an ombré effect. When you want to change the texture, simply pull the inner bag of buttercream out and drop it into another piping bag fitted with a different tip.
You can switch between as many piping tips as you like without dividing your colours between lots of different bags. Since the colours are already layered inside that first bag, they blend gradually into each other as you pipe.
I used pale yellow, orange, peach and pink for this cake, which makes a gorgeous warm colour palette for fall.
If you can make cupcakes, you can make this cake!
Arrange cupcakes on a cakeboard, using a little buttercream underneath each one to hold it in place. I used square cupcakes, but round cupcakes will work too.
Spread buttercream over the tops and fill the gaps between the cupcakes so that they look like one large cake instead of lots of individual cupcakes.
For the flowers, pipe buttercream onto small squares of parchment or wax paper placed on top of a flower nail. Spinning the flower nail between your fingers makes it easy to move the flower around as you pipe.
By changing your piping tips and colours, you can make all sorts of flowers. Try a #104 petal tip for pansies or pipe narrower petals in several layers to make gerbera daisies. For daffodils, pipe the petals first and then build up the centre with a small round tip and a petal tip held sideways to pipe a ring around the middle.
As you finish each flower, slide the parchment off the flower nail onto a flat tray or cutting board. Freeze the flowers for about 10 minutes, until the buttercream is firm.
Then simply lift them up, peel away the parchment and press the flowers wherever you like onto the cake.
And the best thing about making a cake out of cupcakes? There’s nothing to slice! Just pull off a cupcake and serve.
If piping all of those flowers sounds like too much work, this is one of the easiest fall cake ideas in this list.
Start by covering the cake with buttercream. I use my 4 Minute Buttercream for all of my cakes.
Instead of trying to get the frosting perfectly smooth, use a textured cake comb. Hold it against the cake in the same way you would use a straight-edged cake scraper, keeping the base of the comb on the cakeboard so that the pattern lines up every time you spin the cake.
After the first few scrapes, you’ll probably see some gaps in the buttercream. Spread more frosting over those areas and scrape again. Repeat until the texture is even all the way around the cake.
Then press dried flowers straight into the buttercream while it’s still soft and sticky.
If the buttercream has already set when you add your flowers, just pipe or spread a little fresh buttercream wherever you want each flower to go. It will act as glue to hold the flowers in place.
This is a simple way to add lots of texture and detail without intricate piping.
Of course, a collection of fall cake ideas needs a cake that actually tastes like fall!
This pumpkin spice cake has buttery vanilla cake layers with pumpkin pie spice, a not-too-sweet cream cheese buttercream filling and pumpkin buttercream frosting.
The pumpkin buttercream gets both its flavour and its gorgeous orange colour from pumpkin purée and pumpkin pie spice.
Stack the cake with cream cheese buttercream between the layers and then cover the outside with pumpkin buttercream.
I gave the frosting a simple rustic texture using a spoon, which means there’s no need to spend ages trying to get perfectly smooth frosting.
If you’re looking for fall cake flavours rather than just decorating inspiration, this is definitely one to try. Here's my pumpkin spice cake recipe.
Chocolate and pistachio is another delicious flavour combination for this time of year.
I paired chocolate cake with chocolate ganache and pistachio buttercream between the layers, along with kataifi for some crunch, inspired by the Dubai chocolate trend.
After stacking the cake, cover it with pistachio buttercream and press crushed pistachios around the bottom.
For the top, I made homemade truffles using chocolate ganache and kataifi, then rolled them in cocoa powder.
When you cut into the cake, you get chocolate cake, pistachio, creamy fillings and crunch all in the same slice. If you like pistachio I strongly encourage you to make this cake!
This is one of my favourite fall cake ideas because the finished design looks incredibly detailed but the piping doesn’t need to be precise at all.
The entire design is created away from the cake. Start by tracing cookie cutters onto a piece of paper and place a sheet of acetate on top. You can use parchment or wax paper instead, but acetate is thicker and much easier to work with for this technique.
Pipe lots of little random shapes inside each outline. You can use piping bags fitted with small round tips, simply snip the ends off your piping bags, or even use sandwich bags with a tiny piece cut off one corner.
The little pieces don’t need to be identical or particularly neat. You’re essentially creating tiny buttercream tiles that will eventually form an edible mosaic.
Once you’ve filled all of the outlined shapes, pipe your background colour everywhere around them.
Freeze the design for about 10 minutes to make the buttercream firm. Then spread another colour of buttercream over the entire surface of the acetate, pushing it into all of the little gaps. This becomes the buttercream “grout” between the colourful tiles.
Lift up the acetate and wrap it around a frosted cake, pressing gently to attach it. Chill the cake for about an hour, until everything is firm.
Then peel away the acetate to reveal the mosaic. All of those random little pieces of buttercream suddenly become a detailed fall cake design!
If there are any bumps or dents on the surface, scrape around the cake with a cake scraper to smooth them. You can pipe or spread more buttercream to fill in any gaps and then scrape off the excess without damaging the rest of the design, since it's cold and firm from the fridge.
For the final cake, we’re going all-in on Halloween with a vintage Lambeth-style cake.
Start by making some buttercream decorations. I piped pumpkins onto parchment paper using a small round piping tip for the pumpkin and a small star tip for the stems. I made ghosts too, using a medium sized round piping tip for the bodies and tiny black non-pareil sprinkles for the eyes.
You can use the pumpkins just like this, or pipe little ruffles with a petal tip and place the pumpkins on top.
Freeze the decorations until they’re firm while you decorate the cake.
For the cake itself, use different piping tips to build up layer after layer of vintage-style piping. And for this style of cake, there really is no such thing as too much piping! I used star shaped tips (a 4B, #32, and #18) and petal tips (a #125 and #104) for the borders and swags.
Once the cake is decorated, add the frozen buttercream decorations. They'll attach easily to the freshly piped details, which are still sticky. I finished the top with maraschino cherries coated in orange sanding sugar.
This is definitely a Halloween cake design but it’s easy to adapt for the rest of fall by leaving off the ghosts and adding more pumpkins instead.
These eight fall cake ideas range from easy decorating shortcuts to more unusual buttercream techniques and seasonal cake flavours. I hope there’s something here to inspire your cakes this season! You’ll find the recipes and more detailed tutorials linked throughout this post so you can recreate your favourites.
Which one would you make first?
You can also watch a video of this tutorial on 8 Fall Cake Ideas to Try:
