Graduation Special ~ Cake and Celebration Cupcakes

Wait! Let me show you the other side of this cake too.

Isn't it beautiful?

When my sister was graduating with an MBA honors degree I was ecstatic. It was such a proud moment for our family, Abbie had achieved a shining 4.0 and was going to walk in style with multiple medals dangling around her neck. Of course her graduation celebration had to be just as grand too and there is no celebration unless you have celebration cake and cupcakes! I decided to go all out for this one and came up with this beauty.

I was facing multiple challenges when I planned this cake (Oooo, a good baking challenge! Yumm!). One of the challenges was carving a cake. The ball shaped sphere pan I'd bought had failed on me so I actually carved a round cake to create the graduation cap.

Another challenge was getting the fondant to be as realistic as possible so that my cake looked superb. For the book part of the cake I baked up a rectangular cake, frosted it with buttercream, and then added a red fondant cover on top. White colored fondant pages on the sides had indents for pages and I added an indentation on the top so that it looked like a realistic spine too.

Then I worked on the graduation cap. I covered the carved round cake with black fondant and then used a square cardboard piece to make the top of the cap. I made the tassels out of fondant too. It was super detailed and looked gorgeous.

For the final touches I painted the pages rough gold to give them a beautiful classic look.

'MBA ABBIE' phrases were added to the book and a 'Congrats Grad' gold decor string was used to embellish and add more gold to the final look.

Andddddddddd I was done! The tassels looked so real!

This has been one of my most real looking cakes so far!

It really did look like a book and a graduation cap instead of a cake. I was so happy with this one. Unlike every other time when I bake a cake for Abbie's occasions this time the cake wasn't a surprise so she was a part of the making and loved how much detail I'd achieved! That wasn't enough for me though. Abbie is the most special person to me in my life and only a cake (no matter how grand!) wasn't enough for me. I decided to decorate cupcakes too!

I baked my delicious Coffee Casanova cupcakes and decorated them graduation style. The delicious mocha sponge frosted with a flavorful coffee flavored buttercream is Abbie's favorite (coffee crazy sister alert!!!).

I used peanut butter cups and chocolate squares to create a graduation cap for a topper and then piped tassels on top of it! It look so cute!

The other cupcakes were decorated with a degree scroll made out of white fondant. It was completed to perfection with a red ribbon made out of fondant!

I baked the leftover batter into mini cupcakes frosted with coffee buttercream and placed them on a serving plate with a plastic graduation cap cake topper in the middle.

It was the perfect perfect perfect graduation celebration!

I planned a perfect theme and beautiful decorations and the cake and celebration cupcakes were simply FANTABULOUS! I do intend to blog the details of the party decor sometime later ... it was just too awesome to go unnoticed! Until then, memories from my graduation and Abbie's grad celebration have been refreshed and I feel that 'high' all over again which I felt back when it all happened! *sighs*

All the mouth-watering pictures in this post are original Sara's Baked Creations' content. Please have some shame and refrain from copying, recreating, and cheating without giving proper credit and mention!

Sara’s Baked Creations is on Mission Sweetness! Sara and Abbie are hobby bakers who bake for friends and family only. We are not a commercial bakery business; it gives us joy to spread smiles while enjoying sisterhood and living our passion for baking.

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