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Looking for graduation cake ideas for your recent grad? We’ve got you covered. Let’s dive into the world of graduation cakes for some original ideas and inspiration.
1. Med School Marvel
Graduating from medical school is no simple feat! If someone you know has accomplished this milestone, it’s time to celebrate. And there’s no better way than cake.
This gorgeous graduation cake idea is clearly meant for a med school grad. It has the student’s name following “Dr.” and a stethoscope, plus some festive baubles.
You might need some cake-decorating experience to accomplish a cake that looks like this. But even home bakers can pipe a convincing stethoscope onto a cake!
2. Sweet Graduation Roses
Here’s a cake for any grad who loves florals and books. Elegant off-white fondant covers this cake and is topped with flowers in a delicate arrangement.
The flowers on this cake might be highly realistic wafer flowers, which you can actually buy online. Add them to any graduation cake for a delicate touch.
A cookie-cutter piece of fondant featuring the grad’s name and some little books made of sculpted fondant make this cake complete. It’s almost too beautiful to eat.
3. Grad Cake for Macaron Lovers
For someone who’s more a fan of macarons for dessert than cake, why not blend the two together? This beautiful graduation cake idea does so perfectly, in gold.
To use this cake as inspiration, frost your cake in white, and cover with patterned fondant if you wish. Add a rolled-up piece of fondant for the degree.
Add some macarons to the top and accentuating the bottom of the cake. Then, use some golden frosting to pipe delicate details around the cake.
4. Neutral Color Scheme
This show-stopping cake idea consists of a simple, rectangular tiered cake, decorated to perfection with flowers and sprays. A graduation cap on top completes the look.
To make a cake that takes inspiration from this, you’ll need some square baking pans. Make six layers, and gently stack your cakes to create this shape.
Use frosting between each layer of your cake for added deliciousness and stability. You’ll also need a dowel down the center to keep everything exactly in place.
5. Keeping it Studious
This cake is a perfectly bookish take on a square tier cake. The emblem on it is for medical school, but it could be replaced with anything.
You can use a stencil, easily purchased online, to paint any design onto your cake. Use edible paint to create a design your graduate will love.
All you need to make edible paint is food coloring and vodka. Yes, vodka! Make sure your cake is chilled if you’re painting onto buttercream.
6. Perfectly Purple
If you know anyone whose favorite color is purple, then you know that they love to have purple everything. And their graduation cake is no exception.
Achieving the perfect purple shade will be your greatest challenge in replicating this small layered cake. A simply sculpted graduation cap and delicate pearls complete the look.
We think a classic French vanilla cake with buttercream frosting would suit this little masterpiece well. But ultimately, you should choose your grad’s favorite flavors!
7. A Little Bit Blue
This beauty in pale blue would actually be suitable for any occasion. But with such summery colors, we think it’s a great graduation cake idea.
The gorgeous flowers on this cake appear to be made of royal icing. But if you’re not a pro, you can actually buy royal icing flowers pre-formed.
To take inspiration from this cake, all you need is frosting colored with a dash of blue food coloring. Use floral details to finish the look.
8. Square, With Some Flair
Here’s another floral-themed cake, this time with more mature vibes. Just look at those gorgeous rose petals cascading down from the gilded bouquet on top!
If you want to take inspiration from this cake, you can actually use real roses to achieve the look. Spray edible gold paint on the edges.
Real roses are safe to use on food as long as they don’t contain pesticides. Try to use roses that are as fresh as possible before serving.
9. Simple and Sweet in Pink
Here’s an absolutely stunning graduation cake idea that artistic home bakers can achieve without much special equipment. All you’ll need is frosting and food coloring.
To achieve the rosettes found along the edges of this cake, and the cap and writing, use cake piping tips. The key is a smooth frosted surface.
The flowers along the sides might be edible, but they may also be artificial silk flowers. You can find these in craft stores. Just don’t eat them!
10. Rows and Rows of Roses
This beautiful off-white graduation cake idea relies mainly on one technique. That is: making roses out of cake frosting. If you can do this, you’re pretty much set!
As you can see from the image above, you can also take inspiration from this cake to make some delicious cupcakes. This is great for larger parties.
So get out your piping equipment and some frosting, and start practicing! And don’t forget to mold a simple graduation cap out of some black fondant.
11. Classic Elegance in Navy Blue
Break out the edible gold paint again for this navy blue dream! This cake follows the trend of tall square cakes and makes it all its own.
To take inspiration from this gorgeous cake, you’ll need some navy blue edible paint and stencils in a design you love. Use royal icing to create details.
Again, it looks like some of the sprays on this cake may be edible, while others aren’t. You can purchase both varieties pre-formed and ready-to-use.
12. Dreamy Butterflies and Seafoam Green
This seafoam green and white two-tiered cake has vibes of early summer, perfect for graduation. With delicate butterflies and gold details, it’s a delightful graduation cake idea.
Created by cakesbyludy on Instagram, this cake might be beyond most home bakers’ skill level. But that doesn’t mean you can’t take inspiration from this graduation cake idea.
Use white buttercream frosting, plus some frosting colored with green and blue food coloring. Add wafer butterflies and gold details around the cake to finish the look.
13. Beauty Fit for a Bookworm
Some graduates might wish to never look at another book again after earning their diploma (at least for a while). But for some bookworms, there’s never enough!
If your graduate falls into the latter category, a book cake like this beautiful creation might be ideal. The cake artist uses colored fondant to create book spines.
Then, they add in strips of edible wafer to form the pages. They use gold edible paint to write in the book “titles,” actually the grad’s name.
14. Keeping it Classic
Here’s another cake that doesn’t take too many specialized tools to create, yet still looks elegant and professional. Sometimes, the simplest cakes are the most delicious!
To take inspiration from this cake, you’ll need a fluffy buttercream frosting, plain and colored with black gel food coloring. You’ll also need piping tips.
A rotating cake stand will also help you achieve a smooth, flawless look, but it isn’t required. Finish off your cake with some edible gold pearls.
15. Dripping in Gold
To many graduates, a diploma is as good as gold (and probably a lot more expensive). You can convey that idea with a cake like this one.
You can also take inspiration from this graduation cake and use other colors for the drippy ganache that covers the top. What’s your grad’s favorite color?
To create colored ganache, all you need is white chocolate, food coloring, and cream. Create the ganache with the chocolate and cream, and then add your color.
16. For the Budding Biologist
Remember when pretty much every cake you saw was rectangular? There’s something nostalgic about the shape of this cake. Something tells us it’s delicious, too.
To make a cake like this one, you’ll need a large rectangular sheet cake pan. You can make two layers and use frosting between the layers to stack the cake.
Color your buttercream with multiple different shades to create cute biology-themed details all around the surface. Don’t forget the fondant graduation hat to top it off!
17. Perfect for a Princess
We don’t know about you, but this graduation cake gives us major royal vibes. Created by phillycakelady on Instagram, these royal icing details are impressive.
To take inspiration from this gorgeous grad cake, you’ll need an artistic hand or a stencil for a person wearing a graduation cap. You’ll also need fondant.
Creating the cap is simple enough. You can wrap a piece of fondant around a smaller cake circle and top it with a sheet for the brim.
18. Graduate Holding Balloons
The sky is the limit for many people once they earn a degree. This cake, featuring a graduate holding a bundle of balloons, seems to represent that spirit.
You might feel intimidated by a cake like this, and it will require some skill. However, you can take inspiration just from the balloons for your cake.
Melt some chocolate with food coloring, and use a rounded silicone tray to form half circles. Melt the edges and join them together to form a sphere!
19. Photo Frames for Sibling Graduates
Parents often have two children graduating at the same time, either both from college or one from high school. This cake takes that into account.
You could even use this cake as inspiration for a cake for cousins or best friends who are graduating. Snap some photos of them ahead of the graduation.
To print the photos on the cake, you’ll need edible paper and edible ink. Find an edible ink-compatible printer, and you’re ready to create your masterpiece!
20. Lovely Law School Grad
Here’s another beautiful cake that puts a spin on the idea of books and, of course, the graduation cap on top. This time, it’s for a law school grad!
You can take inspiration from this cake by stacking your cakes slightly off-kilter and decorating them like textbooks. Include a fondant gavel if you’re feeling brave!
It looks to us like the cap on this particular cake is made of cake. You can achieve the same by layering your cake into a half-sphere.
21. Repping the Alma Mater
Is your graduate proud of their alma mater? Many recent grads are! And this school spirit cake is the perfect inspiration for their graduation cake.
For your graduation cake, you can create a simple, frosted layer cake with buttercream frosting. Then use edible paint to create your details.
It’s a good idea to practice beforehand on a piece of paper. Getting the details of an emblem like this can be a tricky process that takes practice.
22. White and Gold Elegance
Coming back to a classic rectangular cake shape, this white and gold masterpiece looks stunning and delicious. White buttercream rosettes give it an elegant feel.
You can achieve a similar look if you’re crafting a graduation cake with a few simple techniques. First, you’ll need a smooth layer of white frosting.
Then use piping tips to create rosettes and pearly spheres. Use fondant painted with edible gold paint to add the lettering and some floral elements.
23. Don’t Forget Your Dental School Graduate
This stunning cake is a beautiful idea to congratulate someone graduating from dentistry school! We’ll need someone to take care of our teeth after all that frosting.
To use this cake as inspiration, you can use fondant to sculpt the dental tools that decorate the front. Then take out some royal icing for flowers.
Creating the dental model shown on the top of this cake might be a challenge. But if you’re feeling brave, those would be made of fondant, too.
24. For a Mechanical Engineering Grad
Mechanical engineering is another major that’s no walk in the park. This graduation cake idea showcases all of a newly minted engineer’s most essential tools and equipment.
You can use this cake as inspiration by crafting unique tools out of fondant and painting them with edible paint. We especially love the tape measurer!
You could also use this cake as inspiration for other types of grads. Just consider what tools they’ll be using most in their new career!
25. Straight Outta High School
College grads aren’t the only ones who deserve to be celebrated! We love this hilarious Straight Outta High School graduation cake for the high school grads.
This cake will be hard to achieve unless you have edible paper and edible ink. But you can use it as inspiration even if you don’t.
If you can do decent lettering, you can write “Straight Outta High School” on your cake. Use lettering that matches the image above to convey the reference!
26. Cute and Caffeinated
For some college grads, coffee is all that gets us through those all-nighters and study sessions. Can you believe that these amazing coffee cups are actually cake?
Unless you’re a cake mastermind, making cakes that look like cups of coffee will be a challenge. But we still love the classic pink cake, too!
You can use frosting to pipe adorable little panda bears onto a pink cake, as shown above. Just make sure to bring the coffee, too!
27. Absolutely Adorable
Here’s a cake that’s just as precious and even more doable for us amateur cake decorators at home! All you need is frosting and a piping tip.
Making an adorable little guy like this is pretty simple with a thin piping tip. Color your frosting with black and several other colors for flair.
If your grad is a fan of cute little guys, this cake is perfect. If you’re looking for elementary school graduation cake ideas, this is great!
28. Gorgeous Geode Graduation Cake
This simple but beautiful cake reminds us of a sparkling purple geode filled with glittering crystals. It has a simple but artful design that inspires us!
Use white buttercream frosting as a base, and then use purple edible paint to decorate the base. You could also use purple buttercream as your base.
Paint delicate stripes along the purple portion to give it this striated look. Create a simple graduation hat and scroll out of fondant on top.
29. Squidward is Proud
This amazingly artistic cake decor is perfect for any Spongebob lover! If you’re looking for Spongebob or ocean-themed graduation cake ideas, this is for you.
This cake will be hard to accomplish unless you’re a serious cake artist. But you can use it as inspiration to create your own Spongebob-themed masterpiece.
Use a sea-blue frosting, piped with a scalloped piping tip to create little shells around the edges. You can buy candies that are shaped like seashells for decor.
30. The Forecast Says Graduation
What kind of graduation cake should you use for someone who’s graduating with a degree in meteorology or weather science? I think we’ve found the solution.
The panels on this cake appear to be made out of colored and painted fondant. You can use cookie cutters to create clouds and lightning.
Even just one of these unique panels would make an excellent detail on a graduation cake! And again, don’t forget the books, scroll, and cap.
