Here, you’ll find 24 stunning butterfly cake ideas that’ll impress all your birthday party guests. 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 butterfly birthday 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 butterfly 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 !
Butterfly Cake Ideas For Beginner Bakers
Here, you’ll find 1 easy butterfly cake decorating idea perfect for beginner bakers.
Easy Butterfly Birthday Cake
Difficulty Level: 1/5.
What you will need :
- Enough frosting to cover your cake.
- Butterfly cake toppers.
- Edible 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.
- 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 edible and cake toppers.
What you’ve learned :
As a cake decorator, the very first technique you have to master is how to frost a cake properly.
Butterfly Cake Ideas Perfect For Intermediate Bakers
Here, you’ll find 16 butterfly birthday cake ideas perfect for intermediate bakers.
Simple Butterfly Cake
Difficulty Level: 2/5 (Low-Intermediate)
A little guidance
The easiest way to get beautiful buttercream waves is to use a cake scrapper and move it from the top to the bottom of your cake in a wave motion while spinning your turntable as shown in this quick wave cake tutorial.
Blue Butterfly Cake
Difficulty Level: 2,5/5 (Low-Intermediate)
Don’t hesitate to add more character to your cake by adding flowers and/or texture to your cake design.
A little guidance
Cover your cake as usual and use a cake comb to create texture as shown in this cake comb tutorial. Then, let your cake set in the fridge before adding your cake toppers and decorations.
Ombré Butterfly Cakes
Difficulty Level: 2,5/5 (Low-Intermediate)
Keep in mind you can also mix several butterfly cake inspirations for an even more personal design, like with this second ombré cake that is also a wave cake.
A little guidance
In order to recreate this kind of gradient effect, apply your first buttercream on the top two-thirds of your cake, and your other shade on the bottom third. Then, use your spatula to blend the demarcation as much as you can. Finally, smooth your cake as usual. If you think the gradient isn’t as blended as you wished, keep blending and smoothing until satisfied.
Rosettes and Butterfly Cakes
Difficulty Level: 2,5/5 (Low-Intermediate)
A little guidance
The second cake is actually more a 3/5 cake design but it’s based on the same technique as the first one. Check out this buttercream rosette tutorial to master it. Use different sizes and shapes of piping tips depending on the style you’re looking for.
Dreamy Butterfly Cakes
Difficulty Level: 3/5 (Intermediate)
A little guidance
These two cakes use the same technique (one on a white base and the other on a colored base): watercolor buttercream. You can easily recreate this effect following this watercolor buttercream tutorial. Use smaller amounts of buttercream for a result similar to the first design.
Butterfly Vintage Cakes
Difficulty Level: 3,5/5 (High-Intermediate)
If you want your butterfly birthday cake to be trendy too, a butterfly vintage cake is the perfect option.
A little guidance
To recreate this type of cake, you can follow this vintage cake piping tutorial that tackles most of the piping techniques used to create a vintage cake. You can also follow this tutorial to DIY your heart cakes without a heart cake pan.
Baby Butterflies Cake
Difficulty Level: 3,5/5 (High-Intermediate)
If you’re looking for a more childish butterfly cake design, don’t hesitate to use pastel colors and a more minimalistic cake design like this one.
A little guidance
To recreate these kinds of beautiful fondant elements, you’ll need to know how to use a silicon mold properly.
Floral Butterfly Cake
Difficulty Level: 4,5/5 (High-Intermediate)
If you’re looking for an elegant butterfly cake for a spring birthday party, this is the perfect cake idea for you.
A little guidance
You can try yourself at palette knife cake decorating with this rather beginner-friendly and this more advanced tutorials.
Tiered Butterfly Cakes
Difficulty Level: 4,5/5 (High-Intermediate)
If you’re hosting a lot of guests, a tiered cake might be the best option for you. Keep in mind you can easily adapt any single-tier cake as a tiered cake design. This last tiered cake design is a perfect adaptation of the single-tier ombré cake idea shown earlier in this post.
A little guidance
The single most important thing when baking a tiered cake is to make sure your cake is well-supported. Always (I mean it) use dowels or straws to help the bottom tier support the weight. Believe me when I tell you that you’d better use unnecessary support than see hours of work go to waste.
Butterfly Cake Ideas For Advanced Bakers
These 6 butterfly birthday cake ideas will be perfectly suited to experienced cake decorators.
Three-Tiers Butterfly Cake
Difficulty level: 5/5
This cake design is another great example of how you can combine different cake ideas by adding texture and a watercolor effect.
Butterfly Standing Cake
Difficulty Level: 5/5
If you love original cake designs that stand out from the crowd, you’ll love this standing butterfly cake. Don’t hesitate to use your own favorite colors.
Square Butterfly Cake
Difficulty Level: 5/5
Square cakes are another great original cake idea. Adding flowers really gives it a perfect look for a spring birthday.
3D Butterfly Cakes
Difficulty Level: 5/5
Finally, I couldn’t have written a blog post about butterfly cake ideas without including 3D butterfly cakes. If you want to give it a try at home, you can follow this DIY butterfly cake tutorial.
If you’re looking for more cake ideas, check out my other cake ideas for women or my cake ideas for girls.
Did you enjoy these butterfly 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.
