Coolest Tiki Mask Cake

For my son’s 2nd birthday party we did a Luau theme. For his Tiki Mask cake and cupcakes I used 2 boxes of Duncan Hines cake total and about 4 lbs of store-bought buttercream icing from a local bakery.

For the cake I used a glass loaf pan and baked 2 separate cakes. I did this the night before the party, wrapped them in foil and put them in the freezer since I find it much easier to work with frozen cake. I also made the 8 cupcakes with the leftover cake batter and froze them as well.

When it was time to decorate, I leveled the cakes and frosted just the tops of them so I could put them together. I put one on top of the other. Then I used chocolate icing to ice the entire cake. It doesn’t have to be smooth since it is a Tiki mask which has lots of texture to it. I used whatever chocolate frosting I had leftover to pipe some of the cupcakes.

Then I used vanilla frosting and tinted it 4 different colors-sky blue, leaf green, violet and golden yellow. I used pastry bags and just cut a small hole in the tips of each bag so I could decorate the face. For the black icing, I used a premade tube since it is sometimes hard to get a real black color when you mix it yourself. I then used the rest of the vanilla icing to pipe the remainder of the cupcakes.

For the hibiscus flowers on the cupcakes I used fondant. I made these 2 days prior so they could dry. I took 5 small pieces of the fondant and kneaded sky blue, leaf green, golden yellow, or red into them. Then I rolled out each piece and just used a kitchen knife to cut out my flower and leaf shapes. I used the knife to sculpt lines into each piece to make them look more real. I then took a small amount of fondant and kneaded black into it and rolled out tiny lines to make the center of each flower. I put them on a plate lined with wax paper to dry. When it was time to put them on the cake, I just placed them right on top of the freshly frosted cupcakes so they would stay in place.

I lined a cake board with foil and placed the cake somewhat in the center. Then I alternated vanilla and chocolate frosted cupcakes around the cake to look like a lei. I used 2 cocktail palm tree toothpicks to put on the 2 cupcakes closest to the Tiki mask and added a candle for my son’s age!

This was a fun and easy cake to make! It was a big hit at the party!


4 thoughts on “Coolest Tiki Mask Cake”

  1. I did an almost identical cake for my son’s birthday last year – brighter (read: tackier) colors. I bet we used the same picture to base our design off of!!

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  2. What an awesome cake! It’s super cute! Thank you for sharing. Also, where did you find palm tree cocktail toothpicks?

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