Lion King Cake with Simba Cake Topper

🧾Supplies Required

• Cake - this was a 6 inches round cake that was also 6 inches tall. The cake was made up of 4 layers i.e 2 layers of vanilla pound cake and 2 layers of chocolate cake.
• Buttercream - I used buttercream to sandwich the cake layers, cover the cake as well as to the pipe the rope border for the cake. 
• Fondant - I used Satin Ice for this project. I used white  (tinted in Wilton Juniper Green ) for the leaves and black for the background of the edible image on the side of the cake.
• Edible gold paint + lemon extract - I mixed these to form a thick gold paint to paint the 3D alphabets on my Lion King cake.
• Juniper Green food color - I used this to tint the white fondant for the leaves. I also used this food color to paint the leaves.
• CMC powder - I added CMC powder to the white fondant to make the letters on the cake as well as to the green fondant when cutting out the jungle leaf topper.
• Lion King edible image - This was ordered from a local edible images supply shop.
• Simba paper template - I sourced this from the internet and resized it to fit the top of my cake. Read more on how to resize images for cake decorating in my post here.
• Jungle leaves paper template - These were sourced from the internet as well and resized to fit the cake.
• Alphabet cutters - I purchased this from a local cake decorating shop and used them for the alphabets on the cake.
• Needle scriber tool
• Gum paste tools
• Sugarcraft knife
• Piping tip number 18 - This was used to pipe the rope border for the cake.
• Round cutter - I used this to cut out my black fondant for the edible image.
• Glitter craft paper - This was used to support the Simba cake topper
• Scissors and glue
• Long wooden skewers and toothpicks - These were for the Simba cake topper, the leaf cake topper as well as the 3D alphabets.

👩‍🍳How to Make

Step 1: Make the Cake Topper

The first step was to find a printable image of Simba to make the topper. Again, the internet was my source. Once I had the image I liked (Simba in a sitting position with a cute crown on his head), I resized it (see my post here on how to resize images and templates for cake decorating) and printed out in color, on a piece of normal A4 sized paper. I then cut it along its outline.

Since this was a normal A4 paper, I had to paste it onto a thicker cardboard in order for it to stand upright on the cake, so I choose a gold glitter cardboard as the backing.

I applied glue to my Simba cut out and pasted it onto the cardboard.

And then I cut the cardboard, leaving a thin outline of the gold visible around Simba after cutting.

In order for the topper to stand upright onto the cake, I had to attach a long thin skewer to the back of Simba cut out with some tape. And to make sure the tape and the skewer did not show on the reverse side of the Simba topper, I decided to attach another piece of glitter cardboard at the back.

To do this, I attached the skewer first. And then I applied glue all over the back of the topper and attached it to the reverse side of my glitter card board.

And then I cut the cardboard out, following the Simba topper outline as closely as possible.

And this was how the completed Simba topper looked like:

Step 2: Make the Fondant Jungle Leaves & Fondant Palm Leaves

All the leaves on the cake were made using fondant. I had a total of 5 leaves. 4 were attached to the side of the cake and one placed in an upright position (as a cake topper) next to the Simba topper. 

I did not have any special cutters for the leaves. So I used paper templates as a guide in cutting them out. These jungle leaves are pretty easy to draw, but I chose to get mine from the internet. 

I printed the leaves images and cut them out following their outlines. 

Next, I tinted my white fondant green and rolled it thin. Using my paper templates as guide, I cut out the leaves using my sugar craft knife. 

And then I used my sugar craft tools to draw the veins on my leaves. 

Once I had all my leaves cut out, next was painting them. You don't have to paint them if you choose so, but painting gave the leaves a bit of depth so I used my green gel food color and painted the centers. I diluted the food color with some water so that the color was not too concentrated.

Once the painting was done, I let the leaves aside for the paint to dry.  I kept them covered as I did not want the fondant to dry out completely.

As for the topper on the cake, since it was going to be placed upright on the cake, I added some CMC into the green fondant before cutting it out. And I also rolled it slightly thicker than the rest. This was so that I could attach a toothpick to it.

And because the leaf was thick, cutting it out with a sugar craft knife needed a bit more effort and I also had to smooth the sides with my sugar craft tools after cutting for smooth edges. 

I then painted it just like the other leaves but attached a toothpick to the bottom of this one. I left it to set and dry so that it could stand upright on the cake.

Step 3: Assemble the Lion King Cake

A day before the birthday, I baked the cakes. I let them cool completely, before leveling and layering them with buttercream.

I then covered and smoothed the entire cake with buttercream and piped a small rope border all around the sides with the star tip number 18. 

The first decoration on the cake was the edible image of the Lion King characters in Pride Rock.

I wanted to image to have a thin black background so I rolled some black fondant thin and cut a circle out of it. In cutting the background, I made sure the circle was large enough to fit the edible image. I then attached the edible image onto it with a damp brush.

I attached the edible image (along with the black background) onto the front side of the cake with some buttercream.

After that, I attached the 4 leaves around the edible image, 2 on the left and 2 on the right, as shown below:

The Simba cake topper went on next followed by the leave topper. Since both these toppers had wooden picks attached to them, attaching these to the cake was just a matter of poking the picks into the cake.

Step 4: Add the 3D Alphabets

Next, I made the letters. I added the birthday boy's name in 3D block letters all around the front top of the cake. To make the letters, I kneaded some CMC into white fondant. And then I rolled it to about 1 cm thick, and cut the letters out using my alphabet letter cutter. For ease of attaching them to the cake, I inserted a toothpick into the bottom of each letter.

I then painted the front surface of each letter in gold, to match the gold border of the Simba topper. 

I had to let the letters rest for a few hours to set and hold shape before I put them on the cake. In fact, I prepared these letters while waiting for my cake to bake. So right after adding all the remaining decorations to the cake, I was able to put the letters on.

And with that, the Lion King cake was complete.