Here, you’ll find 16 unique engagement cake ideas for beginner and pro bakers, including easy designs with instructions to recreate them. 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.
How to find an engagement 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 recreate these engagement 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 recipe 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 velvety 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 engagement 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 !
Engagement Cake Ideas For Beginner Bakers
Here, you’ll find 2 easy engagement cake ideas perfect for beginner bakers.
Pearl Engagement Cake
Difficulty Level: 1/5.
Pearl cakes are so elegant yet beginner-friendly, which makes them the perfect cake for you if you’re starting your cake decorating journey.
What you will need:
- Enough frosting to cover your cake.
- Edible pearls.
- Non-toxic flowers with their stems wrapped in floral tape.
- Engagement-themed 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.
- Next, chill your cake in the fridge for 30 minutes or until your buttercream cover sets.
- Use a knife warmed with water to get sharp edges on your cake.
- Finally, place your flowers, edible pearls, and cake topper.
What you’ve learned :
As a beginner cake decorator, the first thing you have to master is how to frost a cake. From there, you can create stunning cake designs thanks to simple elements like edible pearls and cake decorations.
Green Engaement Cake
Difficulty Level: 1,5/5.
Don’t hesitate to play with colors, you don’t have to stick to white.
What you will need :
- Enough frosting to cover your cake.
- Edible pearls.
- Non-toxic flowers with their stems wrapped in floral tape.
- Engagement-themed cake toppers.
How to recreate this cake?
- First, crumb coat and cover your cake as explained in the previous design.
- Add texture to your cake. Place your angled spatula at the center of the top of your cake and start spinning the turntable while slowly moving away from the center.
- Then, repeat the process on the cake’s sides, moving your spatula from the top to the bottom of the cake.
- Place your cake in the fridge until the frosting sets, then, cut the raw edges of buttercream with a knife warmed with water.
- Finally, place your flowers, edible pearls, and cake topper.
What you’ve learned :
Adding texture to a cake is an easy way to elevate its look.
Engagement Cake Ideas Perfect For Intermediate Bakers
Here, you’ll find 9 engagement cake ideas perfect for intermediate bakers.
White And Red Engagement Cake
Difficulty Level: 2,5/5 (Low-Intermediate)
Here’s another very elegant cake design. Don’t hesitate to use your favorite flowers as decorations. Just make sure they’re non-toxic.
A little guidance
As mentioned earlier, adding texture to a cake is an easy way to take it to the next level. To recreate this kind of texture, you’ll need to learn how to use a cake stencil.
Engagement Heart Cakes
Difficulty Level: 3/5 (Intermediate)
Heart cakes are obviously perfectly suited for an engagement party.
A little guidance
Here’s a secret heart cake hack not so secret, you can easily create a heart cake without a heart cake pan.
Engagement Drip Cake
Difficulty Level: 3/5 (Intermediate)
If you want a glamorous cake design for your engagement party, vary different types of cake decorations in the same shade to recreate this abundance feeling.
A little guidance
Chocolate is a great alternative to fondant to create your own cake decorations. If you want to try it yourself, you can follow this geometric chocolate hearts tutorial.
White And Golden Engagement Cake
Difficulty Level: 3/5 (Intermediate)
White and gold are a very classical palette color for engagement cakes. You could easily adapt it by playing with the ratios of each color.
A little guidance
Obviously, you can also use fondant when creating your cake decoration. Simply make sure to dust your silicon mold to release your creations more easily. Then paint them using DIY golden paint.
Engagement Draped Cake
Difficulty Level: 3,5/5 (High-Intermediate)
This would be a perfect cake design for someone looking for a sober but showstopping cake design
A little guidance
Use thin dowels and/or straws to recreate this draped fondant. Don’t hesitate to play with different widths to get a more realistic finish. Check out this quick draped fondant tutorial to get a better understanding of the process.
Pink Engagement Tiered Cake
Difficulty Level: 4/5 (High-Intermediate)
Difficulty Level: 4/5 (High-Intermediate)
Difficulty level: 4/5 (High-Intermediate)
When hosting a lot of guests, tiered cakes are the best option. Don’t hesitate to play with colors, shapes (you could go for square cakes for example), and heights to personalize them as much as you want.
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.
Engagement Cake Ideas For Advanced Bakers
These 5 engagement cake ideas will be perfectly suited to experienced cake decorators.
Spring Engagement Cake
Difficulty level: 5/5
If you’re into refined and delicate cake design, you’ll love this beautiful ombré engagement cake.
Engagement Dress Cake
Difficulty level: 5/5
This kind of cake is amazing if you’re looking for a design that you can personalize to your image.
Engagement Ring Cake
Difficulty Level: 5/5
Of all the cake ideas in this list, these two are obviously the most suited to the theme. Here, you can have fun and play with colors and shapes.
Red Engagement Cake
Difficulty Level: 5/5
If you’re looking for a cake design as vibrant as your love, this cake idea perfect for your engagement party
If you’re looking for more cake ideas you can check out one of my other cake ideas for children and adults. You can also take a look at my bridal shower cake ideas to get ideas that could easily be adapted to an engagement party.
Did you enjoy these engagement 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.
