Cake Boards DIY – How to Make and Cover Cake Boards with Foil

Learn how to make and cover cake boards with foil and other decorative papers with this awesome cake boards DIY tutorial.

So the title of this page reads ‘cake boards DIY’. Well, do I make my own cake boards, then? My answer is no most of the time, and yes, very rarely.

Cake boards are not something that people often make on their own. They are so easily available and cheap; there is no reason why anyone would want to make one.

Cake Boards DIY – Covering Cake Boards

Making cake boards from scratch is really not that difficult, at least in the way I make them. All I use is thick cardboard and food-grade foil (I have even used baking foil) to wrap the board. This can be found in cake decorating supply shops or you can buy them from here. You can even use decorative paper to provide its food safe or you have a layer of plastic wrap around it.   

These are the steps I follow in making my own cake boards and covering them with paper and other decorative material:

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How to Make and Cover Cake Boards – Make Your Own Cake Boards

These are the main supplies you need for this cake boards DIY project:

• Cardboard – This should be slightly larger than the size of the cake you want to make the cake board for.
• Cake Tin – I use my cake tins to draw out the cake board template. You can also freehand the drawing.
• Ruler – This is to measure the sides of the cake board accurately so that the cake board is correctly sized.
• Cake board foil – this is material that will be used to cover the base board.
• Glue
• Scissors

And this is the step by step process for the DIY cake boards:

The template

• The first step for making the cake boards is to get the template ready. For instance, if you are going to bake an oval-shaped cake and need an oval-shaped cake board, you would need to trace your oval cake tin outline on a piece of cardboard. 

• Next, remove the tin and draw another outline, this time, approximately 1 inch to 1.5 inches away from the earlier outline. The 1 to 1.5 inches allowance is to make sure the cake board is slightly bigger than the cake itself. Cut the board following the second outline. 
• Repeat the process for another board cut out of the same size. I make sure I use at least 2 boards stacked together to hold my cakes, but if you are ok with one, you need not cut 2 pieces of board. One would suffice. 

• Glue both the board pieces together. This would form the base of your cake board.

Cutting the wrapper paper

• Next, place the cardboard cutouts on your foil and trace the pattern onto the back of the foil.

• Now, the foil piece that you use to wrap the board template cannot be in the exact same size as the cardboard. This is because it needs to be wrapped around the cake board. This is not a full wrap. However, the sides need to be folded underneath so that the cake board looks neat and the cardboard is not visible.
• For this purpose, when you cut your foil, give it an extra allowance of about 2 inches on the sides. This is so that there is enough foil to fold over the board sides.

• To make it easier to fold over, make short snips all around the foil. When doing this, make sure the cut does not go beyond the outline of the cake pan you made on it earlier. You can keep each snipping to a distance of about 1 to 2 inches each.

• Finally, wrap the foil around the board and secure the bottom neatly. Now foil does not need glue to hold it in place. But, if you use paper or other material, you would definitely use glue to hold everything in place.  

• Once the gluing is all done, turn the board over. And this is how the completed cake board would look like:

Cake Boards DIY – A handmade cake board

Cake boards DIY note:

I only use cardboards for small cakes (i.e. less than 8 inches in diameter). Even then, I stack at least 2 cardboards together to make sure they are able to hold the weight of the cakes. If you are planning on making a large cake board to hold a large cake, it is best to use a piece of plywood wrapped in foil as the base. Mere cardboard might not be able to hold the weight of the cake.

This is how I usually make and cover cake boards for my cake board DIY projects. But this is not just it. In most cases, when I use plain foil to cover my cake boards, I don’t quite like to leave my cake boards plain and not decorated. So most of the time, I cover them with fondant (for fondant covered cakes). Other times, I add some other decorations to it (in the form of fondant cut-outs, candles, doilies, etc). Click here to read all about how I cover my cake boards with fondant and here to read all about other cake board decorating ideas. 

Hope this cake board DIY tutorial is useful for you in making your own cake boards and covering them with foil.

If you have any other ideas on how to make and cover cake boards, please feel free to share them below.

Happy Decorating 🙂