Looking for Graduation Cake Ideas? If you’re looking for inspiration to place an order with your local baker, or you want to recreate one of these cakes yourself, you’re in the perfect place. Whether you’re graduating from high school or university, you’ll find 13 amazing graduation cake ideas, including easy designs with instructions to recreate them.
How to find a graduation cake idea suited to your cake-decorating level?
I’ve come up with a system. The cake ideas are presented to you according to their level of difficulty. There are three categories :
What Are Beginner Cake Ideas?
These are easy cake ideas. If you’ve never decorated a cake before (or only did it once or twice), these are the cakes that you should pay attention to.
- What you’ll find: Beautiful cake ideas that only require basic cake decorating techniques. This is a great place to start your journey.
What Are Intermediate Cake Ideas?
Low Intermediate Baker: If you are confident that you’ve mastered the cake decorating basics, such as how to smooth a cake, but feel like you still have a lot of techniques to learn apart from this foundation, this category is perfect for you.
- What you’ll find: Graduation cake ideas that require both basic decorating skills and one or two techniques that are a little bit more advanced. This is a great place to grow your cake-decorating skills.
High Intermediate Baker: If you’ve mastered both basic techniques and several more advanced cake decorating techniques, these cake ideas are made for you.
- What you’ll find: Stunning graduation cake ideas that can be fairly challenging, but are a great place to get even better than you already are.
What Are Advanced Cake Ideas?
If you consider yourself an experienced cake decorator and have mastered most of the decorating techniques, including the use of fondant, then this is the perfect place for you.
- What you’ll find: Showstopping and challenging cake ideas, perfect to sharpen and maintain your skills.
The Grading System
Finally, I’ve also assigned a grade of difficulty to each cake inspiration: 1/5 being the easiest design and 5/5 being the hardest. The goal is to make the ranking the most accurate possible. You will find this to be particularly helpful if you happen to fall in the Beginner or the Intermediate Cake Ideas categories.
Growth Tip : This list is great a place to set goals about your cake decorating skills. Pin this post and come back later to tell us how far you’ve come in your cake decorating journey !
How to recreate these graduation cake ideas?
What cake recipe should you use to make your perfect cake come true?
To recreate these cake ideas, you will need a trustworthy cake recipe. You have several options.
Adapt your favorite cake recipe.
There are a lot of ways to adapt a cake recipe. You mainly have four options to tweak your favorite recipe :
- You could change the flavor of your cake recipe: with citrus zest, the essence of your choice, or turn it into a chocolate or carrot cake for example.
- You could add a filling: a caramel sauce, a homemade flavored whipped cream, ganache, or buttercream.
- You could also add some texture: oreo bits, crumble crumbs, nuts, or fresh fruit for example.
- Finally, you could personalize your frosting.
Be careful, if you’re a beginner baker, having to figure out both your cake design and creating a new cake recipe could be overwhelming. Therefore, I always recommend taking your learning journey one step at a time.
Look for a cake recipe.
Where? You can ask friends, or family or simply look on the internet. You have to keep two things in mind though :
- The recipe has to be suitable for cake decorating, especially for cakes that require stacking or carving (intermediate and advanced cake ideas).
- Once again, if you’re a beginner baker, be careful not to put too much on your plate and choose a recipe suited to your current level.
Use my cake recipe recommendation.
Finally, you could try the delicious recipe I recommend. I firmly believe everyone should have a trustworthy chocolate cake recipe, and my chocolate cake with cream cheese frosting is both beginner-friendly and perfect for cake decorating. I’m sure you’ll love it.
What you will love about this recipe :
- It has a perfect chocolate flavor.
- It’s a really easy recipe, perfect for beginners.
- It has a great texture.
How to follow the instructions of the designs.
For the cake designs in the beginner category: I’ll provide written instructions on how to recreate the cake idea presented to you. Don’t hesitate to watch video tutorials about the basic techniques such as how to smooth a cake.
For the designs in the intermediate category: I’ll provide some guidance on how to perform the more complicated techniques.
For the advanced category: you are an experienced baker, at this point, and you will find great opportunities to put this experience to use. To be completely honest, I cannot make myself several cake ideas from the advanced category, so trust your abilities and go for it.
Find the perfect graduation cake idea for your baking skills.
Growth Tip : If you aim to get better at cake decorating, you should choose a cake idea that feels sligthly above your current cake decorating level. Get out of your comfort zone !
Graduation Cake Ideas Perfect for Beginner Bakers
Here, you’ll find 3 easy graduation cake ideas perfect for beginner bakers.
Simple Graduation Cake
Difficulty Level: 1/5.
This cake design is perfect if you want to create a cake in the colors of your school or university.
What you will need :
- Enough frosting to cover your cake.
- Graduation cake toppers.
How to recreate this cake?
- First, you must crumb-coat the cake to avoid any crumbs in your final design. Apply a thin and even coat of frosting with your offset spatula all around your cake.
- Smooth it with your bench scraper, holding it at a 45-degree angle on the cake while spinning your turntable. Your bench scraper isn’t supposed to move, only turn the table.
- It doesn’t have to be perfect as it only is the first coat. Chill the cake 20 to 30 minutes in the fridge (until your frosting sets).
- Then, apply a thicker coat of frosting and repeat the smoothing operation. Fill in any gaps and smooth the cake again. Repeat this operation until the cake looks smooth enough for you. Here, you’ll find a video tutorial of the covering process, if needed.
- Chill your cake in the fridge for 30 minutes or until your buttercream cover sets.
- Finally, place your beautiful cake toppers.
What you’ve learned :
Covering a cake with buttercream is the most basic technique a cake decorator has to master. Once they do, they can create beautiful cake ideas like this one.
Easy Graduation Cake.
Difficulty Level: 1/5.
If you’re looking for a more elegant design, this cake design was made for you.
What you will need:
- Enough frosting to cover your cake
- Graduation cake toppers.
- Edible golden pearls.
How to recreate this cake?
- First, you must crumb-coat the cake to avoid any crumbs in your final design. Apply a thin and even coat of frosting with your offset spatula all around your cake.
- Smooth it with your bench scraper, holding it at a 45-degree angle on the cake while spinning your turntable. Your bench scraper isn’t supposed to move, only turn the table.
- It doesn’t have to be perfect as it only is the first coat. Chill the cake 20 to 30 minutes in the fridge (until your frosting sets).
- Then, apply a thicker coat of frosting and repeat the smoothing operation. Fill in any gaps and smooth the cake again. Repeat this operation until the cake looks smooth enough for you. Here, you’ll find a video tutorial of the covering process, if needed.
- Now you can place your edible pearls where you see fitting.
- Chill your cake in the fridge for 30 minutes or until your buttercream cover sets.
- Finally, place your beautiful cake toppers.
What you’ve learned :
With a few cake toppers and edible pearls, even beginner cake decorators can create stunning cake designs.
Cute Graduation Cake
Difficulty Level: 1,5/5.
What you will need :
- Enough frosting to cover your cake.
- Edible pearls.
- Graduation cap cake topper (you could go use a store-bought version or try to DIY it with fondant).
How to recreate this cake?
- For the buttercream cover. First, you must crumb-coat the cake to avoid any crumbs in your final design. Apply a thin and even coat of frosting with your offset spatula all around your cake.
- Smooth it with your bench scraper, holding it at a 45-degree angle on the cake while spinning your turntable. Your bench scraper isn’t supposed to move, only turn the table.
- It doesn’t have to be perfect as it only is the first coat. Chill the cake 20 to 30 minutes in the fridge (until your frosting sets).
- Then, apply a thicker coat of frosting and repeat the smoothing operation. Fill in any gaps and smooth the cake again. Repeat this operation until the cake looks smooth enough for you. Here, you’ll find a video tutorial of the covering process, if needed.
- For the writing. If you’re not used to writing with buttercream, use a toothpick or the tip of a knife to trace where you’re going to write.
- Then, place your sprinkles leaving enough space for the writing.
- Chill your cake for 30 minutes or until your buttercream cover sets, so it doesn’t get damaged in case you have trouble with the next step.
- Now you can retrace over the imprint you made on your buttercream. If you’d like to practice beforehand, you can always do so on a sheet of parchment paper until you’re confident enough.
- Finally, place your cake topper.
What you’ve learned :
Learning to write on a cake is an essential skill, that will get easier with practice.
If you’re looking for more easy cake ideas, especially for men, you can check out my post about cake ideas for men that can easily be adapted as graduation cakes.
Graduation Cake Ideas for Intermediate Bakers
Here, you’ll find 7 graduation cake ideas perfect for intermediate bakers.
Gradient Graduation Cake
Difficulty Level: 2/5 (Low-Intermediate)
If you’re looking for a man’s graduation cake that’s not too complex, this gradient cake is the perfect design.
A little guidance
You can easily recreate these beautiful layers of buttercream, but always make sure the previous buttercream layer has had enough time to set in the fridge before moving on to the next buttercream layer.
Black And White Graduation Cake
Difficulty Level: 2,5/5 (Low-Intermediate)
This cake would also be perfectly suited to a man’s graduation.
A little guidance
To recreate this bicolor buttercream simply apply your lighter buttercream on the upper half of the cake and the dark one on the bottom half. Then, smooth it all as usual. Finally, hide the demarcation with golden leaves, applying them with a brush.
Graduation Bento Cake
Difficulty level: 3/5 (Intermediate)
If you want to celebrate with only one or two of your loved ones, bento cakes (or mini cakes) are a great option.
A little guidance
If you don’t own the perfect cake tin size to recreate such a little cake, you can bake your cake layers on a sheet pan and cut your cake layers from it.
Elegant Graduation Cake
Difficulty Level: 3/5 (Intermediate)
If you’re looking for an elegant graduation cake for women, this is the perfect cake for you.
A little guidance
To recreate the profile portrait in fondant you can print or draw a paper guide to follow when cutting your fondant. For the flowers, you can use fake or fresh flowers, but make sure to wrap the stems in floral tape.
Vintage Graduation Cake
Difficulty Level: 3,5/5 (High-Intermediate)
If you’re looking for a coquette, cute and girly graduation cake, you’re going to love this vintage graduation cake.
A little guidance
To recreate these cute graduating frogs, you can follow this buttercream frog tutorial.
Tiered Graduation Cake
Difficulty Level: 4/5 (High-Intermediate)
You could go for a simpler look, recreating the graduation stole and cap to the colors of the school. If you’re hosting a small party, you could easily convert this cake to a one-tier cake.
A little guidance
If you’re wondering how to recreate this graduation cap, you can follow this fondant graduation cap tutorial.
High School Graduation Cake
Difficulty Level: 4/5 (High-Intermediate)
If you’re hosting a big party, a tiered cake appears to be the most convenient option. You can easily personalize it to the colors and the symbols of the school you’re graduating from to reminisce all the good memories that were forged here.
A little guidance
When making tiered cakes, you have to pay extra attention to the structure of the cake. Therefore, you should always use a sturdy cake board for each tier. You should also support the bottom tier with dowel rods or bubble tea straws cut to the height of the cake. Finally, you should ensure each tier is leveled before stacking them.
Graduation Cake Ideas for Advanced Bakers
These 3 graduation cake designs will be perfectly suited to experienced cake decorators.
Library Graduation Cake
Difficulty Level: 5/5
This library-inspired cake is the perfect cake design to celebrate graduation, the hard work, and the long hours of study that are now behind you.
Stacked Books Graduation Cake
Difficulty level: 5/5
In the same spirit, this stacked book cake is both elegant and showstopping.
Square Graduation Cake
Difficulty Level: 5/5
Square cakes are quite unusual, so if this is the cake design you choose, you’re sure to impress your guests.
Did you enjoy these graduation cake inspirations? Sharing is caring!
Please let me know in the comments and/or tag me on Instagram @theperfectcakeidea. I’d love to see your creations. And, don’t forget to pin this post so you can come back to it.
Pin this post and come back to it later.
