Take a look at these cool homemade Carousel cake ideas shared with us by cake decorators from around the world. Along with the birthday cakes here, you’ll also find loads DIY birthday cake-making ideas and how-to tips to inspire your next birthday cake project. Enjoy!
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Featured Cakes
Cake by Elizabeth Z., Basel, Switzerland
After browsing the website for inspiration, I decided that a carousel cake would be the perfect idea for my son’s second birthday party; he just loves animals and bright colors.
The base is a 10″ round cake frosted with buttercream. I was short on time so I used cardboard to create the centerpiece and then decorated it with different materials. The animals are sugar cookies decorated with royal icing. I baked the cookies for the carousel on a stick and just inserted them into the cake after decorating.
The kids totally loved it! Adults also thought it was a huge success, so thanks for the idea!
Cake by Allison S., Shreveport, LA
I made this carousel cake for a little girl who is a friend of my son. She was having her fourth birthday party at a local carousel. Her mother asked me to do a horse cake but I couldn’t seem to come up with a creative enough way to do it so I just did the whole carousel.
I made a two layer 12″ round cake for the base and placed it on a 12″ lazy Susan (turn table) so that it would actually go around like a carousel. I found a salad mold pan that was metal and fluted and it seemed like the perfect thing to make the awning for the carousel. I made the awning cake in that pan and placed it on a clear plastic plate turned upside down. I also made some iced sugar cookies in the shape of horses and used Royal Icing to “glue” them to brightly colored candy sticks. The flag on top was made from royal icing which I piped onto wax paper that was laid across a couple of children’s markers to give it the wavy shape. It was attached to a wooden skewer. The skewer was inserted into the top of the awning cake.
To put it all together I used a simple drinking glass from my kitchen for the support. I cut a cardboard circle to fit snugly into the clear plastic plate. I poked a hole in the middle of the circle and used Royal Icing to “glue” it to the rim of the glass. (The hole in the middle was so that the air could get in to dry and harden the icing.) I cut a few wooden dowels to the height of the cake and inserted them in the middle where the support was needed. Then I placed the candy sticks with horse cookies around the middle. They were long enough that I could insert about an inch of them into the cake for support. Next I carefully placed the glass with the cardboard circle into the middle so that the top of each candy stick touched the cardboard and I used Royal Icing to glue each candy stick to the cardboard circle. I covered the cardboard circle on the top with a doily and then placed the awning cake (that was on the inverted plate) on the top of the cardboard circle and doily.
Because the plate was upside down and the cardboard circle fit snugly into it the whole assembly was amazingly sturdy. I was able to transport it to the party in two separate pieces and then easily put the top piece in place once the base was in place. The kids loved that the carousel cake. It actually went around like the carousel they were riding. It was a great hit at the party.
Cake by Emily L., Ridgecrest, CA
This carousel cake was inspired by some of the cakes that are already on this site. I made it for my daughter’s first birthday. The base is two 9″ round cakes. I used yellow boxed cake mix and put a little colored frosting in between the layers for a fun effect when it was cut. I covered the base with white fondant. The horses were cut from sugar cookie dough and baked with sucker sticks underneath them. The top of the cake is devil’s food boxed cake mix baked in a bundt cake pan. I used the top of the bundt cake only.
I put that on a round piece of cardboard covered with aluminum foil. I just decorated the top portion with different colors of vanilla frosting that I made with food coloring. I used a frosting bag with the star tip. The middle of the cake is just a cardboard tube that I covered with fondant and decorated with frosting. To assemble I decorated the base cake with different colored frosting and then used the sucker sticks to attach the horses. I attached the tube in the middle with just some frosting around the base and then placed the top portion on all of it.
The entire carousel cake was assembled on a cake stand with a turn table so that it could rotate.
I baked this carousel cake using a recipe in two 9″ round cake pans. Then I baked sugar cookies in zoo animal shapes-zebra, lions, giraffe, elephant and the letters of her name. Bake lots of extra cookies as they tend to break. I gave the extra unbroken ones to people who didn’t want cake.
The animals are decorated with frosting and then with gel coloring. I frosted and covered the letters of her name with sugar crystals. The frosting is also a homemade recipe tinted pink on request. We then sprinkled candy stars over the surface.
When time to assemble the carousel cake (at final destination) I inserted drinking straws at eight spots around the cake and attached the animals to straws using the frosting. I made the roof of the carousel out of extra wrapping paper folded. It didn’t stay on well and I wish I had used something else. Then I attached the cookies to spell her name around the outside of the cake. She was delighted! Don’t forget to remove the roof if you’re using lighted candles!
Cake by Lisa M., Blacksburg, VA
I made the animals several days ahead. We printed animal pictures from the web covered them with wax paper and outlined them with Royal Icing. We then filled in the outlines with a thinned version of Royal Icing (Wilton’s color flow recipe.) The animals had to dry for several days. We made them thick enough that they weren’t terribly brittle. They are edible but they don’t taste great.
To make the carousel cake canopy I baked two cakes. The first was a standard 8 inch round cake; the second was baked in a bowl-shaped Pyrex dish. The bottom cake was a larger round cake. The columns and cake plate used to make the tiers came from a standard kit from Wiltons. I used Royal Icing as the glue to attach each animal to a drinking straw and inserted the animals around the cake.
We were able to cut the carousel cake so that some pieces had a single carousel animal attached to a post a charming effect and a big hit with the children.
Cake by Annette C., St. John, IN
I made this carousel cake for my daughter’s 3rd birthday – she was enthralled with carousels. I used the Wilton separator set which my husband repainted in our theme colors.
The base is 2-layer 12-inch and the top a 2-layer 8-inch. The color candies in the shell border are thin wafer candies. I molded candy melts for the white swirl decorations on the side and used simple borders and dots for decoration.
The top made the cake – it is an 8-inch Styrofoam disk with a dowel rod running through it and into the top layer of the cake. I used a nail in the top if the dowel rod (pointing up) to secure 1/4”ribbon at the top, then glued the ribbon to the Styrofoam to form the canopy. When I was done I drilled a small hole in a little wooden ball (bought at a craft store and painted gold) and placed it on top of the nail point to finish it off.
It took a couple hours but was worth it for the overall look.
This carousel cake was super simple and went together incredibly fast since the canopy horses and candy molds were prepared ahead of time.
I made this carousel cake in 2005 for my daughters first birthday. It may not look it but this cake was very simple to make. All it is: two round Madeira cakes covered in pink ready roll fondant icing then decorated with different colour tubes of icing.
The horses I drew by hand onto card and decorated them each with a bow and used 8 pieces of doweling for the poles. The doweling is coated in ribbons. The centre pole is the tube from a role of foil also covered in ribbon.
Cake by MaryKay C., Kiev, Ukraine
This is a great carousel cake. Three pictures of the carousel cake followed by three pictures that show the component parts and how it was put together. Bottom part is two-layer 12-inch-diameter white cakes frosted with white buttercream icing. Then white plastic turn style (Wilton lazy susan for cake decorating) was placed on top, resting on dowels fitted into the cake.
Carousel canopy is chocolate cake baked in a scalloped round pan. Top cake is resting on a cardboard cake board cut to the measurements of the scalloped cake pan (be sure to cover the cardboard in contact paper so it won’t get damp from the cake).
Cookies are frosted in royal icing with shimmer dust, pearl, silver, and gold bead details. Ponies are then stuck to balloon sticks fitted on both ends with plastic balloon cups that go on the end of balloon sticks — to form the carousel poles.
Centerpiece is a white plastic cup, which supports the top cake on the cake board. I decorated the plastic cup with buttercream icing stars, hearts, stripes and let it set before I assembled the cake. After cake was assembled, I piped additional frosting stars, borders, dots on the plastic poles and turn style for added decoration.
Top bit on the canopy is made from fondant brushed lightly with shimmer dust, with a heart-shape plastic toothpick inserted inside. My six-year-old and her friends loved it – especially since it really turns.
Cake by MaryKay C., Kiev, Ukraine
We had a circus party for my daughter’s 7th birthday. I made a carousel cake.
Carousel animals were cookies iced with royal icing. The cookie cutters I used mostly came from a Williams Sonoma set. Some also from Foose tinsmith (which has an incredible variety of cutters).
Next time I’ll know to make more ponies — they went first. Rhinos and polar bears were the least popular.
Cake by Allyson H., Lafayette, LA
My daughter had been insisting on a merry-go-round party cake for her third birthday so we had a circus themed party.
I made a two layer 14 inch cake for the base and a two layer 8 inch cake for the top part.
The carousel horses are from Wilton and I painted them to match the party’s colors (red, blue and yellow). The elephants on the top layer are a printout from clip art. I printed them onto card stock and painted them the corresponding colors. I then glued them to wooden dowels and inserted the dowel in the top of the cake.
The party cake top is actually the top to a wooden birdhouse that I just frosted; it is resting on top of the dowels and there is also a clear plastic cup holding it up.
The carousel cake was a chocolate Duncan Hines prepared according to the inside the box directions. Icing is Wilton recipe for buttercream and then colored accordingly.
I used a variety of tips and stencils to apply decorations.
This party cake serves a ton of people but I thought the base needed to be this size for right impact.
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