Superhero Birthday Cake - An Awesome Tutorial

Need a superhero birthday cake idea? Here is a 4 tier Marvel Avengers themed birthday cake design you can use.

A 4-tier Marvel Superhero birthday cake with Thor hammer topper

A 4-tier Marvel Avengers Superhero Birthday Cake

I made this cake for my son’s 12^th birthday. We had a Marvel Superheroes themed party for his 12^th birthday and so when I asked him which superhero he wanted on the cake, he said all! So, I designed a cake, trying as much as I could to incorporate as many of his favorite superheroes on the birthday cake as possible. We had Thor, Captain America, Iron man, Hulk, Spiderman, Wolverine and the Agents of Shield represented on the superhero birthday cake!

Making or sculpting the superheroes figurines is not exactly my cup of tea. So I negotiated and succeeded in making my boy agree to have his cake decorated with the superheroes’ logos and symbols instead. And as a bonus, I made a 3D Thor hammer as the cake topper.

This was a large superheroes birthday cake. The top tier was 8 inches in diameter, and the bottom tier was 14 inches in diameter. We did not need so much cake at the party, so only the 2nd and 3rd tiers were real cake, which was 10 inches and 12 inches cake each.

How to Make a Marvel Avengers Superhero Birthday Cake

Main supplies for Marvel Avengers superhero cake:

Raw Material

Cake – Out of the 4 tiers, only the middle 2 tiers were real cake. Both measured 10 inches and 12 inches in diameter and about 4 inches high each. I used my butter pound cake recipe for the 10-inch tier and chocolate cake recipe for the 12 inches tier.
Buttercream icing – I used buttercream to fill the cakes as well as to crumb coat them.
Royal Icing- I used this to make some of the logos on the cake
Fondant – the entire cake was covered in fondant. I used Satin Ice in white , red , black and baby blue. For the rest of the colors, I tinted white fondant with Wilton and Americolor food coloring.
Edible silver mist – I used Wilton Silver Color Mist to spray paint Thor’s hammer as well as the 3D letters on the side of the cake.

Tools

Styrofoam dummies – The topmost and bottom-most tier of this cake were Styrofoam dummies measuring 8 inches and 14 inches in diameter each.
Pizza cutting wheel – This, together with my sugar craft knife were used to make most of the logos and deco on the cake.
Extruder tool – I used this tool for all the borders on the cake.
Alphabet cutters – I used two types in this project. The first set in block letters for the 3D upright standing Happy Birthday message, my son’s name, and the number 12 on the cake. I purchased this set from a local cake decorating shop. The other type was Clikstix alphabet cutters in block letters. I used this for the words “MARVEL SUPERHEROES”.
Round cutter set – I used this to assist with the cutting especially all the round outlines. I also use these for Captain America’s logo as there were a few circles in it and also used it for hulk’s radioactive logo.
Marvel superheroes logo templates
Styrofoam block and Styroam cutter – I used this to make Thor’s hammer and used a battery-operated styrofoam cutter to shape the hammer.
Fondant glue
Hot glue – I used this to stick together the Styrofoam pieces I used to make Thor’s hammer cake topper.

Assembling the Avengers cake:

The logo templates

To begin with, I got all my templates ready. I got these from the internet and resized them. This is so that that they were all of the same sizes on the cake.

Thor Hammer cake topper

Next, I made Thor’s hammer. I drew the hammer by hand (by looking at images on the internet) and used it as a template to cut out my Styrofoam block. I had to stick a few layers of the Styrofoam sheet in order to achieve the required thickness. And then I used my Styrofoam cutter to cut out the shape of a hammer.
I then covered it with white and brown fondant and painted the white in silver. As you can see, there are some designs on the edges of the hammer. I made these by randomly imprinting my 5 petal flower cutter into fondant.

Thor cake topper made of carved styrofoam

Decorating the dummy cakes

Next were the cake dummies. I made and decorated this much in advance as compared to the actual cake. I covered the smaller one in light blue and the bottom one in a combination of yellow and very dark green.

Making the logos

And then I prepared my Avengers logos. I used royal icing color flow technique to create 2 of my logos i.e. the Hulk’s fist and the Iron Man face.

Baking and preparing the cakes

Three days before the party, I baked the cakes. Once cooled, I leveled, filled, and coated them with buttercream. And then I covered them in fondant. For the second tier, I covered it in white. And the third tier, I covered half in maroon and half in bright red.
At the corner of the bright red section, I cut out a small section and added some yellow fondant. This was for Iron Man.

The side design of my Marvel Avengers Superhero birthday cake

And then I went on to decorate the rest of the Marvel Avengers superhero birthday cake. I cut out all the logos in fondant and used my extruder tool to pipe our borders for each of them. I also used the extruder tool to pipe out the cake borders as well as to cover the joints where two different colors were on the cake.

The other side of my Marvel Avengers birthday cake

The alphabets on the cake

As for the wordings, I made the 3D upright standing ones in advance so that they have time to set and harden. I used maroon for the “HAPPY BIRTHDAY’ and then painted them in silver edible paint. My son’s name was entirely white which I then painted in silver.

The front of my Marvel Avengers Superhero birthday cake

As for the ‘MARVEL SUPERHEROES’, I used Clikstix cutters and attached the alphabets to the cake with glue.

The back of my Marvel Avengers birthday cake

I finished off the Marvel Avengers cake by attaching all the deco pieces together including Thor’s hammer.

And that's that. My Marvel Avengers Superhero cake.

Hope you find this useful. Happy Decorating 🙂