Beach Wedding Cake Tutorial – A Tropical Theme

Here is a gorgeous beach wedding cake I made for a really sweet couple sometime back. 

It’s a 3 tier cake and consistent with the tropical beach wedding theme, the cake itself was decorated with fondant strips that gave the cake a sea-like feel, with the colors of the strips resembling that of the seawater itself. And for the tropical theme, I added 2 types of tropical flowers made in gum paste, the plumeria and the hibiscus. I left the hibiscus flowers white to match the rest of the cake and the plumeria flowers.

Beach Wedding Cake Tutorial

This was a fun cake to make, and the thing I like most about this beach wedding cake is the gradually deepening colors of the sea waves.

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How to Make a Beach Wedding Cake

These were the main supplies I used for this cake:

• Cake – This is a 3 layer cake however, only the top 2 tiers were real cake, the bottom one was a styrofoam dummy as the couple wanted a tall cake but not so much of a real cake. The cakes (including) the dummy measured 6 inches, 9 inches, and 12 inches in diameter each, with the height of each measuring approximately 6 inches. The topmost level was baked using my butter pound cake recipe while the second level was a chocolate cake. Both recipes are available on my site here.
• Buttercream – I used buttercream to fill the cakes and crumb coat them. Click here for my buttercream recipe.
• Fondant – This was the main icing for the cake. I used Satin Ice in white for the base covering and then tinted it into the seawater shades accordingly.
• Mr and Mrs cake topper – I bought this from a local cake decorating shop. I was made of glitter paper and attached to a lollipop stick and was perfect for this tropical beach wedding cake.
• Gold ribbon – This was store-bought and I used it to cover the sides of the cake board. 
• Gum paste plumeria and hibiscus – I made both types of flowers with Satin Ice gum paste. I have prepared separate tutorials for these flowers. Click here to learn how to make the gum paste plumeria and here for the hibiscus flowers.

And this was how I assembled the wedding cake:

The gum paste flowers

• First of all, I prepared the gum paste flowers. I choose plumerias and hibiscus because these are tropical flowers, and match the tropical beach wedding theme. In fact, I had these flowers made one week in advance. Click here for step by step tutorial on how to make the plumerias and here on how to make the gum paste hibiscus.

Stacking the beach wedding cake

• Closer to the delivery day, I baked the wedding cakes, layered and crumb coat them with buttercream, and covered each tier, including the Styrofoam tier in white fondant. I then stacked the tiers on top of one another. The first tier was supported by the second tier with bubble tea straws. Support was not necessary for the second tier as the third Styrofoam tier was able to take the weight of both the top two tiers.

The tropical beach wedding cake before any decoration

Making the fondant sea waves

• Next were the sea waves. I tinted white fondant with the following colors (except for the white, of course). And then I started with the white waves. I rolled white fondant into ⅛ of an inch thickness and cut out medium-sized strips. The ones shown here are about 15cm long.

• I applied shortening on each strip and attached them to the cake, starting right from the top. And then, using my finger, I curved the top edges lightly (on both top ends of each strip).

• Also, as I attached each strip, I adjusted the top of the strips so that they don’t lay too flat on the cake, instead form light frills to resemble sea waves. I made 4 layers of white before moving on to the next color.

Second color of the tropical sea waves

• I continued with the strips in the same blue color until the bottom of the first tier. 

First tier of the beach wedding cake with 2 tones of sea color

• And then, I rolled a long piece of fondant in the same shade of blue in a curved form as shown.

• This strip was to cover the top of the second tier. I applied it to the cake with some shortening.

• And then I continued with another layer of waves, still in the same shade blue.

The third color of the sea waves

• After that, I moved on to a darker shade of blue. I made a total of 6 layers in this shade.

The forth color

• After that, I moved on to a darker shade of blue. I made a total of 6 layers of waves in this shade.

• As in the top of the second tier earlier, I covered the top of the third tier with a turquoise-colored strip. 

• And I continued with 2 more rows of the same turquoise layers of waves before moving on to a darker shade of turquoise.

• I made a total of 5 layers of waves in dark turquoise.

The fifth color for the tropical beach wedding cake sea waves

• The final shade I put on the cake was a deep green color. I added layers of waves in this color until it reached the bottom of the third cake layer. 

Covering the cake board for the tropical beach wedding cake

• Using the same shade of green, I covered the cake board. And I repeated the waves pattern on the cake board by curling the edges of the fondant strips that I positioned on the cake board (I used 3 strips for the cake board intentionally so that I could form the curls at consistent intervals all around the board. 

• I trimmed the excess off the cake board and attached a gold ribbon around the cake board.  

The beach cake flowers

• Next to go onto the beach cake was the cake topper and flowers. Before attaching the “Mr & Mrs” topper, I positioned the plumeria flowers first. And this was how I did it. I placed 2 small lumps of fondant as shown.

• I then attached one plumeria flower to each of the lumps with shortening. 

• And I repeated the same process with 2 other plumerias on the other side. As for the sides, I attached one flower on each side, as shown:

• This was how the topper flowers looked from the top. I then poked in the “Mr & Mrs” topper in the center.

• As for the sides, I used 2 hibiscuses – one on each side, flanked by 2 plumerias.

This was how the completed tropical beach wedding cake looked like:

Tropical beach wedding cake in pretty sea hues

Hope you enjoyed this tropical beach wedding cake tutorial. If you have any comments, please leave them in the comments section below, I will try to respond as soon as I can.

Thank you for reading!

Happy decorating 🙂