Here, you’ll find 20 beautiful fall cake ideas to celebrate a birthday, the beginning of the season, or even a fall wedding. If you’re looking for inspiration to place an order with your local baker, or you want to recreate one of these cakes yourself thanks to the guidance I provide, you’re in the perfect place.
How to find a fall 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: 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 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 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 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 fall 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 !
Fall Cake Ideas For Beginner Bakers
Here, you’ll find 3 easy fall cake decorating ideas perfect for beginner bakers.
Easy Fall Birthday Cakes
Difficulty Level: 1/5.
Let’s start with a simple Fortnite cake design perfectly suited to very beginners.
What you will need :
- Enough frosting to cover your cake.
- Fall-themed cake decorations and cake toppers.
- Sprinkles.
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.
- Next, chill your cake in the fridge for 30 minutes or until your buttercream cover sets.
- Use a knife warmed with water if you want sharp edges on your cake.
- Finally, add your sprinkles, cake toppers, and cake decorations.
What you’ve learned :
As a cake decorator, the very first technique you have to master is how to frost a cake properly.
Autumn Birthday Cake
Difficulty Level: 1/5.
What you will need:
- Enough frosting to cover your cake.
- DIY Edible sand.
- Fall cake decorations and cake toppers.
How to recreate this cake?
- First, crumb coat, cover, chill, and cut the edges of your cake as explained in the previous cake design.
- Then, place your edible sand, your cake decorations, and your cake toppers.
What you’ve learned :
Cake decorations are the beginner cake decorator’s best friend. You can easily DIY them with a little bit of creativity, like with this edible sand.
Fall Cake Ideas Perfect For Intermediate Bakers
Here, you’ll find 10 fall cake ideas perfect for intermediate bakers.
Simple Fall Cake
Difficulty Level: 2,5/5 (Low-Intermediate)
A little guidance
There’s nothing simpler than buttercream pumpkin. Use a 6B and a 4B Wilton piping tips to create different sizes of pumpkins. Don’t hesitate to practice on parchment paper beforehand, if you’ve never used a piping bag before.
Fall Ombré Cake
Difficulty Level: 3/5 (Intermediate)
A little guidance
Apply your colors one on top of the other from the darkest to the brightest and smooth your cake as usual. Then create the texture by using a cake comb as shown in this cake comb tutorial.
Fall Drip Cakes.
Difficulty Level: 3,5/5 (High-Intermediate)
You can easily mix the latest cake trends with the fall theme.
A little guidance
To recreate this kind of cake you’ll need to know how to create a drip cake, how to pipe buttercream borders, and how to pipe buttercream pumpkins.
Fall Lunch Box Cake
Difficulty Level: 3,5/5 (High-Intermediate)
A little guidance
Recreating this kind of small design can be quite tricky. You can trace your different designs with a toothpick before piping to get proper spacing and a neater end result. Make sure your buttercream is soft enough for this kind of piping.
Fall Vintage Cakes
Difficulty Level: 4/5 (High-Intermediate).
Vintage cakes are another kind of trendy cake you can adapt to the fall season.
A little guidance
To create your own fall vintage cake you can follow this vintage cake piping tutorial.
Fondant Fall Cakes
Difficulty Level: 4,5/5 (High-Intermediate)
A little guidance
Check out this detailed tutorial to learn how to cover your first cake in fondant. You can also have a look at this fall fondant cake toppers tutorial.
Fall Cake Ideas For Advanced Bakers
These 7 fall cake ideas will be perfectly suited to experienced cake decorators.
Tiered Fall Cakes
Difficulty Level: 5/5
If you’re planning on hosting a lot of people, a tall tiered cake is your best option. You can also adapt any of the single-tier fal cake ideas into a tiered cake design.
3D Pumpkin Cakes
Difficulty Level: 5/5
Finally, I couldn’t have written a post on fall cake ideas without including these iconic 3D pumpkin cakes.
If you’re looking for more cake ideas, check out my other cake ideas children or for adults.
Did you enjoy these fall cake inspirations? Sharing is caring! Pin this post to come back to it.
Please let me know in the comments if you’d like some specific cake ideas and/or tag me on Instagram @theperfectcakeidea. I’d also love to see your creations.
