Makeup Cake | Step-by-Step Tutorial

An easy, beautiful, and chic Makeup Cake with step-by-step directions and pictures on how to make this makeup cake for any birthday celebration.

Step-by-Step makeup cake directions are near the bottom of the post. 

If you love cakes check out my Minion Cake too!

Okay, where was I? Yes, this makeup cake was the next in my yearly installment of birthday cakes for my husband’s niece. My super awesome now 15-year-old favorite girlie. Ever since I was welcomed into their family, she has been my sidekick.

Always excited to be in the kitchen with me baking and she loves picking out her birthday cake designs.

Her very first cake from me was just three years ago and it was a crazy fondant cake, full of colors and at the time perfect for her personality and obsession with neon colors (gosh, I am happy that phase is gone. It was blinding).

Anyway as she has grown into the beautiful young lady she is today, her taste has evolved as well. We went from the colorful fondant cake, to the epic Minion Cake, to an elegant Kit Kat cake last year, and now this Makeup Cake. Can you see the kid is growing up? (tears!!!)

She sent me an inspiration from Pinterest and I modeled this cake after a few that I liked. The cake itself is pretty easy to make.

I know working with fondant is daunting for most but it can be very easy if you keep your designs simple and chic.

For example, I opted for a simple quilt pattern design instead of complicated trimmings. After my first attempt at the fondant makeup decorations, I decided it would be smart to buy them. 

I bought them on Etsy where apparently, there are a gazillion shops that make them.

Here’s how to make this cake for the makeup lover in your family. I can see this being a great cake for a shower, birthday party, or even graduation!

To start, you will need the following:

• One 8 or 9-inch double-layer cake of your choice. (I used this chocolate cake recipe)
• 1 batch of buttercream frosting (I used the caramel frosting from the above chocolate cake recipe)
• 24 ounces Pink Fondant or any color you wish.
• Makeup fondant decorations (you can make these yourself using different colored fondant and/or gum paste or just buy them on Etsy!)
• White Sugar Pearls
• A ruler
• Edible glue
• Paintbrush

General Directions (printable version below):

Now that you have everything that you need, let me walk you through the assembly. It’s pretty straightforward forward so no need to stress.

First, if you are making your own makeup cake toppers, I suggest you do this the day before assembling the cake so they dry out and are firm. As you can see, the amount and color of toppers you need depend on how you want to decorate the cake.

I used lipstick, blush, pencil, etc.

Next, assemble your cake. I baked this chocolate cake recipe and made a batch of that caramel frosting. My cake was three layers so it will have some height to it. Frost it roughly.

Freeze the cake briefly so the frosting firms up. Then do another layer of thin frosting around the cake and try to smooth it out. Freeze the cake again as you prepare the fondant.

Next, roll out your fondant into a big circle. I used 24-ounce pack of fondant and I think rolled it into a 12-inch circle. Just make sure the circle is wide enough to cover your cake. You can measure the height of the cake to be exact.

Cover the cake with fondant. Smooth out and cut off excess. You can save some of the fondant to make a band and bow. These are optional of course.

For the outside of the cake, I opted for a simple quilt design. I referred to this video on how to do it with a ruler since I didn’t have any special quilting tools (like THIS or THIS). I suggest you watch the video before starting.

Once you have your quilting done, use edible glue to attach a pink 2-inch band around the bottom of the cake. Add a bow at the bottom as well (the bow was just a 1-inch band of fondant folded crisscrossed. Nothing fancy).

Using edible glue, attach the white sugar pearls in the intersection of each diamond. Do as many or as little as you wish. As you can tell, I added the sugar pearls after finishing the cake as I thought it needed more. And it was indeed a great addition.

That’s it! It was a very easy cake to make, just like the Minion cake, it took a few hours but it was well worth it. She loved it very much and I can’t wait to see what she wants next year for her Sweet 16!

If you have any questions, feel free to leave them in the comments below.

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Yield: 1 3-layer 9-inch cake

Makeup Cake

An easy, beautiful, and chic Makeup Cake with step-by-step directions and pictures on how to make this makeup cake for any birthday celebration.

Ingredients

• One 8 or 9-inch double layer cake of your choice. (I used this chocolate cake recipe)
• 1 batch of buttercream frosting (I used the caramel frosting from the above chocolate cake recipe)
• 24 ounces Pink Fondant
• Makeup fondant decorations (you can make these yourself using different colored fondant and/or gum paste or just buy them on Etsy!)
• White Sugar Pearls
• A ruler
• Edible glue
• Paint brush

Instructions

First, if you are making your own makeup cake toppers, I suggest you do this the day before assembling the cake so they dry out and are firm. As you can see, the amount and color of toppers you need depends on how you want to decorate the cake. I used lipstick, blush, pencil, etc.

Next, assemble your cake. I baked this chocolate cake recipe and made a batch of that caramel frosting. My cake was three layers so it will have some height to it. Frost it roughly.

Freeze the cake briefly so the frosting firms up. Then do another layer of thin frosting around the cake and try to smooth it out. Freeze the cake again as you prepare the fondant.

Next, roll out your fondant into a big circle. I used 24 ounce pack of fondant and I think rolled it into a 12-inch circle. Just make sure the circle is wide enough to cover your cake. You can measure the height of the cake to be exact.

Cover the cake with fondant. Smooth out and cut off excess. You can save some of the fondant to make a band and bow. These are optional of course.

For the outside of the cake, I opted for a simple quilt design. Watch the video above to help with this.

Once you have your quilting done, use edible glue to attach a pink 2-inch band around the bottom of the cake. Add a bow at the bottom as well.

Using edible glue, attach the white sugar pearls in the intersection of each diamond. Do as many or as little as you wish.

Finally, top the cake with the fondant make up decorations.

Making this Recipe?

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