When faced with the task of making a unicorn cake for my unicorn party I was a bit intimidated. I’m sure you’ve seen the array of sophisticated unicorn cakes out there with their perfect fondant horns and frosting! I just don’t have the baking skills to get that done and I don’t want to spend the money to get it done professionally.
So what to do?
Well, I thought, I’ve already made a free horse cupcake cake! Just add a horn and some wildly colored hair!
It’s so easy to make! Let me show you how!
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What You’ll Need for your Unicorn Cupcake Cake:
- Foam board cut to about 18″ x 24″
- The horse cupcake cake template.
- 26 cupcakes of choice (I know it’s not a perfect 2 dozen). Hmm I wonder what you could do with 10 extra cupcakes?
- White Vanilla Buttercream frosting --> My favorite recipe
- Rainbow Swirl Frosting
- Wilton 1M frosting tip
- Black licorice for the eye.
- Pink twisted lollipop for the horn.
Prepare the Rainbow Swirl Frosting
I decided to make this step its own blog post so click here to learn how to easily make your rainbow swirl frosting!
This step is a little time consuming but really not all that complicated. If you’re short on time or just want to make things simpler you could choose go with one color. Or you could pipe each color individually rather than combining all the colors into one bag. I’ll show you the way I did it and you can simplify it if you’d like.
Set the Cupcakes and Pipe!
Here’s a quick video of the process.Be sure to subscribe to my YouTube channel for more!
Use the free horse cupcake cake template as a guide to place your cupcakes on the foam board. You’ll want to add a a little bit of frosting to the bottom of your cupcakes so they don’t slide off the board. (Of course I forgot to do that on the video).
Pipe most of the cupcakes white, leaving the tail and 2-3 cupcakes on the top unfrosted to pipe the mane. I just used a swirl pattern with my Wilton 1M tip. (Which is the extent of my piping skills).
Make sure to fill in ALL the big gaps in between. In this pic I had only made one very quick and messy pass but you get the idea.
Now pipe the mane and the tail with your multicolored frosting. I made sure the pink/purple frosting was mostly on top. I piped little hooves also.
Now just insert the lollipop in the icing in between the cupcakes to make the horn. It stayed in position perfectly.
I cut up a licorice rope to make the sleepy eye and laid it carefully it on the frosting.
That’s it! Your amazing unicorn cake is done! Now just sit back and wait for gobs of little girls squeal in delight!!
Now go check out my full post on this magical unicorn party to completely DIY your unicorn party!
Unicorn Party Printables
Cupcake wrappers and toppers
Favor Boxes
Birthday Party Packages
Invitations
Cake Toppers
Go check out all the unicorn party DIY posts:
- Truly Magical Unicorn Birthday Decorations DIY
- White Chocolate Unicorn Bark
- DIY Unicorn Backdrop Decorations- w. Printables
- Rainbow Tissue Paper Tassel Garland DIY
- DIY Rainbow Swirl Frosting (Unicorn Cupcakes)
You can’t keep all this cuteness to yourself. Don’t even try, pin it!
Loved this recipe – you made it soooo easy!! I am not terribly creative, but your template and directions were great. I did find out the hard way vegan butter does not work for the frosting, but when I tried again with real butter it came out beautifully. Thank you again – you completely made my daughter’s birthday the , “BEST DAY EVER!”
You’re so welcomed. I’m so happy you were able to create a fantasic unicorn birthday experience for your daughter!
My daughter’s 7th birthday party was canceled because of COVID-19. We were having a family friend bake a beautiful unicorn cake for her, but she called today to tell me her son’s co-worker has COVID-19, and although he did not come in contact with the cake, I couldn’t risk it. My google search for ‘easy unicorn cake’ still came up with complicated and detailed cakes…I had no time, energy, talent or tools to make any of them. Your template and step-by-step tutorial literally saved the day! Thank you so much! Stay healthy!!
Your comment totally made my day! Thank you!
That unicorn cupcake cake’s awesome! I always wondered how to make rainbow swirled frosting…now I know! Thanks!
What a sweet idea!! I love it!!?
Your video was amazing !!! So easy to follow and recreate ! Amazing work.
Thanks! My goal is to make it as feasible as possible.
I love how easy it is to create a shaped “cake” with all the cute little cupcakes. Your rainbow frosting is super fun and the “lolly” is perfect. This looks like something I might actually be able to pull off….maybe!
If I can do it, trust me, you can too!
What a beautiful and colorful cake!! I’m loving how it turned out!!
Thank you! Such a fun one to make too!