If you’re looking for an entertaining and trendy option for a dessert at a birthday party or another event, then an emoji cake could be the perfect choice for you.

A fun crowd-pleaser, cakes that look like keyboard emojis can be cute, funny, or both, making them a versatile option that works great for kids, teens, or up-with-the-times adults.

Taking the time to make your own emoji cake can be a great way to add a personal touch to your dessert and a fun way to practice your baking skills.

While it may seem like a challenge, making a cake that is perfectly formed into an iconic emoji can actually be fairly straightforward.

This article will cover a few backing tips and tricks as well as ideas to help you get inspired.

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What Is an Emoji Cake?

An Emoji Cake can be any kind of cake, cupcakes, or even a giant cookie that’s patterned after the design of a keyboard emoji.

While the basic face emojis can be the easiest to pull off, you could potentially create a dessert that looks like any emoji you can think of.

The only real limits to what you make can be your imagination and your willingness to get your hands dirty in the kitchen.

Why Choose an Emoji Cake?

In recent years emojis have become some of the most well-known icons of popular culture. Cute and easily recognizable, the guests at your party should be both amused and delighted to find a familiar emoji being served up in edible form.

Choosing emojis as the theme for your desserts, or even for your entire event, can leave you with a lot of room for creativity while still being simple enough to help you avoid too much stress.

How to Make Your Own Emoji Cake

Whether you’re a novice chef or a master baker you should be able to find a method for making a great-looking emoji cake.

The guidelines below can be followed as loosely or as precisely as you want.

In the end, one of the most important parts of creating an emoji cake can be that you have fun doing it, so you shouldn’t stress the details too much.

Deciding Which Emoji to Recreate

According to Google, there are over 2,500 different emojis in use today. From the basic emoji faces and hand signals to emoji animals, foods, and other symbols, there can be a lot for you to choose from.

For the best results, you should select a symbol that is uniquely recognizable as an emoji.

For example, the laughing-crying face emoji is iconic and will be immediately recognized, whereas one of the emoji flags might be confused by your guests as being just a generic flag.

Since emojis come in all sorts of different shapes, you should have plenty of options to work with.

If you’re a confident baker or just not afraid to try something a little more advanced, then you could create a cake that is a replica of one of the emoji hands or another complex shape.

If you want to keep it a little simpler, one of the round face emojis could be your best option. You shouldn’t restrict yourself to the idea of making a cake perfectly in the shape of an emoji though.

If you’ve got some skills with frosting or topping, you could potentially draw any emoji or multiple emojis on the top of any shape of a cake.

Choosing a Base

While the first thing that may pop into your mind when you think about baking an emoji cake may be a yellow cake base, you can potentially adapt any flavor to fit your needs.

While emojis can come in many different colors, the flavor of cake you choose doesn’t necessarily need to reflect this.

With enough frosting, any color of cake can become the perfect tone for your needs. A few fun ways to get creative with your cake batter can be to choose a flavor that people may not see very often, such as blue or red velvet.

You can also create a chocolate and vanilla marble cake by dividing a pan in half with cardboard or a piece of plastic, putting vanilla on one side and chocolate on the other, then removing the divider to allow the two flavors to mix a bit.

Keep in mind that your base doesn’t have to be a traditional sheet cake. You can flex your baking muscles by creating a layered cake or become more crowd-friendly by crafting a batch of emoji cupcakes.

If you really want to mix it up, you can create emoji cookies or an emoji fruit pizza. If you’re making the cake for someone in particular, then choosing their favorite treat or cake flavor as a base can be a nice touch that makes the dessert extra special to them.

How to Pull Off The Classic Emoji Look

One of the most intimidating parts of creating an emoji cake can be getting the toppings just right.

While frosting on the fine details can occasionally be a challenge, there are ways that you can make it easier on yourself while still getting a great looking cake.

Finding Inspiration

One of the best ways to get started with your project can be to go online and find some inspiration.

Pinterest, google images, and baking websites can all offer ideas that you can adapt to your own cake.

You may find tips and tricks that surprise you and topping ideas that you hadn’t thought of before.

Consider the Possibilities

Sprinkles, chocolate chips, and any other candy you care to put on your cake can all be used as a way to add elements of your emoji design onto the cake without having to be a master with a piping bag.

While emoji cakes can be a fun way to improve your frosting skills, you can have a great time creating the details with other toppings as well.

A mixture of white and dark chocolate chips could be used to create the eyes of an emoji face, while strawberries or red sprinkles could create part of the mouth.

You can also think outside the box with cookies, marzipan or fondant as toppings. Fondant, in particular, can be especially useful.

As a moldable frosting, you can use it like clay to create the features or details of your emoji and then simply place them on top of the cake. If you’re willing to search a bit, you may even be able to find pre-made cake toppings that are already in the shape of emojis.

Since they have become such mainstream icons, you can purchase a wide variety of products that feature them. If you want to go the extra mile, you could also look for emoji-themed plates, napkins, and cups to go with dessert!

Testing Your Topping Skills

It can be a good idea to do a test run of your idea before trying to create it for a crowd. Making a practice cake a few days or even a week or two before your event can be a great way to make sure you’ve got it down before you’re under pressure to impress guests.

If you’re worried about having an extra dessert sitting around the house, then you can give the practice cake away as a gift to a neighbor or friend.

If you’re planning on using a piping bag to add details to your cake but you’re nervous about making a mistake, then you can practice piping the design onto wax paper.

Once you’ve got it down, you can simply scoop the practice frosting back into the bag or mix up an entirely fresh batch.

Getting Professional Help

If the results that you’re getting from your cake creation aren’t exactly what you were going for, then there are a few things you can try.

First, you can attempt to adjust your original idea to better suit what you have to work with. If you still just can’t seem to get your design to come out right, then you could go to a professional bakery and see if they offer custom cake designs.

While it may lack some of the personal touches, getting a cake professionally made for you could potentially save you some time. It can be important to keep in mind that having the cake made will likely cost more money than creating it yourself.

Conclusion

Emoji cakes can be a fun crowd-pleaser that works great for kids and teens. Making one for a birthday or another event can add a fun twist that you wouldn’t get from just any old cake.

While it can require some extra effort to make your own cake instead of buying one, it can be a great way to improve your baking skills and impress your guests.

If you love the idea of having an emoji cake as the centerpiece of your party but don’t feel up to making one yourself, you may be able to hire a bakery to create one for you.

Whichever option you choose, you should have fun designing your cake and enjoy every last bite of it.