Simple and Gorgeous Cake Topper for a New Year!
Did you know that food can be crafty? It totally can! Think about all of the super sweet bento box lunches you’ve seen that look like little creatures! And what about super adorable cupcakes or awesomely decorated cake balls? Sometimes food absolutely can be crafty!
I’ve been wanting to do this forever. FOREVER. Back in the day when I was working to start up my own baking business I had developed all sorts of ideas for quick and easy but totally gorgeous cakes. AND I worked up ways to make totally custom cake toppers using fondant which is easily purchased or made. Now to be fair, my skills are a weensy bit rusty but even with minimal skills you can rock out a fabulous cake to ring in the new year!
For this project you will need:
- Fondant
- Edible glitter (search on Amazon)
- Fondant cutters (optional)
- Wood skewers
- Pretty bundt cake
(search on Amazon)
(optional)
Here is my pretty bundt cake being decorated with pretty gold glitter. Search on Amazon for edible glitter OR you can even use powdered sugar from the grocery store or luster powder from the craft store. The luster powder is kind of metallic but definitely not glitter. It’s better than nothing, though!
Isn’t that pretty? Let’s get this thing looking festive for the new year!
This right here is fondant. This is store-bought fondant and it’s come a long way in recent years, in my opinion. Now I’m not 100% on why I purchased the brown chocolate, but it’s probably because I wasn’t thinking. I stopped at the Hobby Lobby on my way home after a 14-hour drive and totally got the wrong thing BUT I went ahead and made it work 🙂
My cake being chocolate brown I had intended to grab teal but who knows what happens when the brain gets tired and fuzzy!
Knead your fondant until soft. Wax paper on your work surface will guarantee you’re not trying to peel fondant off of anything difficult like your counter!
Place another piece of wax paper on top of your fondant and roll out to an even thickness. I went with 1/2 an inch.
Use fondant cutters to cut out your numbers for the new year OR cut the numbers by hand <— this can be super fun and look really unique!
If using cutters gently push the shapes from the cutters. Smooth fingerprints by rubbing over the fondant. You can also use vegetable shortening to help smooth the shapes. I used my wooden skewers to make polka dots!
On the backside of each number push a skewer into the fondant. As long as the skewer goes in around 75% in it should hold without covering the skewer from the backside, too.
Use your edible glitter to decorate your numbers. You can go full glitter or polka dot-like I did. To be honest I wish I went full glitter since my fondant matches my cake so much but I was dedicated to my original polka dot concept if even working with the wrong colors!
If making dots, brush the excess away.
Push the skewers gently into your cake and you’re done!
Now, to be honest, my road-tired mind didn’t even consider trimming my cake so that it would be nice and flat on the bottom and I should have done that for even better results, but it’s still pretty!
And did I mention tasty? The total time it took me to make my cake, including back time was about an hour and 5 minutes. Boom! Festive and fast. We’re starting out the new year working smarter rather than harder and I’m digging it! Happy New Year and I can’t wait to share some more crafts and DIY with you in 2016!
A crafter since her earliest years, Allison spends a little time every day making something. She crafts, sews, paints, glues things onto other things, and is a firm believer that a life spent creating is a life worth living. Visit Allison’s blog, Dream {a Little} BIGGER.