Personalized Graduation Cake Idea

This personalized graduation cake idea is a fun way to celebrate your graduate. I will provide helpful instructions and links to make duplicating this idea easier.

If you are planning a graduation party, you will want to check out this sweet idea for decorating.

Personalized Graduation Cake Idea

Class of 2025. That’s my kid. We made it, and we are ready to celebrate all of her successes. Part of the festivities involve food. A cake was a must.

We are blessed with different circles that want to celebrate my daughter. Because of this, we had a couple of different parties. The first was a joint party with some of her school friends. This was immediately following commencement and was a cake party.

The second party was for our family and the church family. I’ll share some of the details from that party at a later date.

Today is about he cake celebration. Because we were celebrating 7 graduates at this party, I had 7 frames with edible photos of each of the graduates.

The colors on this cake can be adapted to any school colors.

Materials Needed to Make a Graduation Cake

This post contains Amazon affiliate links. Anything purchased through these links goes to support the free resources I provide here at Meaningful Mama. Thank you for your support. Here’s a link to my Storefront and some of my favorite things. A number of my cake decorating tools are featured in my Storefront.

white fondant
navy blue fondant
white Candy Melts
oil-based navy food coloring
silicone frame molds – oval and rectangular
silicone frame molds – rectangular
printout of your child – print onto edible paper – I was able to get this done at Safeway. All I had to do was size my photos on an 8.5″ x 11 printout and take it in for them to copy onto edible paper. Ask your local store if they provide this service. It cost me $6 for this. Bring your ruler. For some reason, the first print done at the store came out slightly smaller, so they had to re-do it and size it up a bit so that it would be the right size for the frames.
edible silver paint
clay extruder
edible glue
number cookie cutters

How to Decorate a Graduation Cake with a Graduation Cap Top Tier

Before getting started, I would encourage you to read my Cake Making 101 and Cake Making 201 posts to get some of my best tips and tricks for cake decorating. I also have some of my favorite must-have cake decorating products featured here.

A week ahead of time, you will want to cut out a 9″ x 9″ layer of navy blue fondant, rolled to 1/8″-1/4″ thickness. This will be the top of your graduation cap. Leave it out for the entire week to dry. Putting it in a cold oven with the oven light turned on is a way to dry out fondant quicker. I still felt nervous, so I cut out four layers of navy blue cardstock cut to a 9″x9″ size and added this under the fondant to create stability. I used glue tape (my new favorite crafting product) to tape the papers together. Then, I used edible glue to attach the paper to the fondant square.
Make a four-layer 9″ cake. Why not try some of my go-to cake recipes: chocolate, white-velvet, or lemon?
Make a two-layer 6″ cake.
I like to freeze my cakes because I find them easier to frost when frozen.
Fill and cover cakes with my favorite buttercream recipe or your own favorite fillings.
Cover the 4-layer bottom tier in white fondant and the 2-layer top tier in navy blue fondant, or adapt the colors for your own school.
Melt candy melts according to package directions. Stir in OIL-BASED navy blue food coloring until the desired color is reached. Oil-based is essential for chocolate.
Pour melted chocolate into your silicone frame molds. Stretch the edges to ensure the chocolate gets into the cracks. A toothpick can help push the chocolate into the cracks as well. Smooth the chocolate on the back side of the mold with a knife.
Set the chocolate molds in the refrigerator for at least 60 minutes. Carefully, remove the chocolate from the molds. The oval mold is especially fragile.
Take your sized photos to a local bakery to get printed. I sized mine in the online design platform Canva. You can add elements on Canva and choose a rectangular or oval frame. Size it to match the inside of your silicone frames. Drag and drop your uploaded photos into those frames. Take a ruler and make sure your photos were printed onto edible paper, true to size.
Cut your photos a little larger than the frame and glue the edible photo to the edge of the frame using edible glue.
Attach the chocolate frames, equally spaced around the cake, using melted Candy Melts. Candy Melts are a great way to attach chocolate or any other components to a fondant cake.
Stack your small navy blue cake onto your bottom tier. I like to use boba straws as cake dowels for stability.
Add your 9″ fondant square to the top of your 6″ cake. Secure using buttercream or melted chocolate.
To make the tassel, you will need to use a clay extruder. Simply stick a thin snake of fondant into the clay extruder, with the spaghetti attachment, which creates thin worm-like fondant pieces. Twist out your fondant strings. Do this in the two colors. Note: Work quickly. The thin, fondant strings dry out quickly and break.
The top will have the tassel, top nob, and a thin piece of fondant string to attach the tassel to the nob. Note that the tassel has a silver piece wrapped around it, as well as the graduation year made from fondant numbers cut using cookie cutters. The graduation year should be painted silver as well.