Today I’m going to show you how to make the CUTEST Halloween Cake featuring a sweet ghost cake topper and easy pumpkin patch border! This cake is perfect for kids’ Halloween parties!
This cake design is perfect for any skill level of cake decorating! Even if you’ve never created a cake topper before, this is a great place to start. This is one of our favorite festive Halloween cakes, and was one of the first Halloween cakes that we added to our site. So much fun!
How to Make a Halloween Ghost Cake Topper
For the ghost’s head, I compressed/molded a (22g.) Rice Krispie Treat into a ball approximately 1 1/4 inches wide. Then, I dipped the end of a lollipop stick into a little melted candy melts and drove the stick into my rice cereal ball.
Doing this just helps to keep everything where it belongs. (If you would rather, you could do the same thing with a ball of gum paste or fondant and allow to dry firm. I just love how quickly rice cereal treats can be molded to create a firm shape. Plus, it’s an excuse to keep rice cereal treats around the house!).
Next, I snipped a piece of 20 gauge floral wire in half and wrapped it around the lollipop stick until secure. I hooked the ends so that my ghosty could hold onto her candy bucket.
You do not have to use 20 gauge wire….just choose something that will be stiff enough to hold it’s shape. The wire serves as “ghost arms”…and also will help to give a little movement to our ghost costume.
I smoothed a little fondant over the rice cereal treat ball. This is optional, but helps if you feel that your cereal ball is a bit lumpy.
Next, I took fondant with some tylose mixed in (gum paste would be great too, as well as a 50/50 mix of fondant and gum paste) and I rolled it nice and thin….I then draped it over the “lollipop body” we’ve made.
Do a little trimming until your fondant drapes just how you like.
Now, for the candy bucket! I had some candy pumpkins that we’ll talk about a little later. I just lopped off the top, brushed with a little piping gel so that my sprinkle “candy” would stick, and then pushed a “u” shaped wire (ends dipped in candy melts) into it.
The handle of the bucket easily hangs from the hooked hands that we made earlier. Then, for a little something extra, I added fondant shoes and a bow. The shoes make our ghost look more like a little girl dressed up in a costume rather than an actual ghost that’s hungry for candy!
The eyes are drawn on with a food coloring pen….and I decided to draw a face on our pumpkin bucket too!
I used my ghost within a few hours of making her, but for best results…allow to dry for a couple of days. She’ll be less fragile.
Now our sweet ghost topper topper is finished!
One of the most important things about the topper is the anchor. I like an extra long anchor, and so I snipped a drinking straw to the approximate height of the cake or so, and slid the lollipop stick anchor right into it. Easy! Now our little trick or treater can stand up straight. ;0)
How to Make an Easy Pumpkin Patch Cake Design
Now that our ghost is ready, let’s add some personality to the sides! Today, I did this with a bag of Mellocreme Pumpkins. They remind me a little of Candy Corns as far as texture, in case you haven’t seen them. Anyway, these made for a super quick pumpkin patch scene.
I simply sliced the candy pumpkin in half..
Then, I pressed the pumpkins into the sides of my buttercream-frosted cake. (Use a little buttercream as glue if your frosting has crusted over.) *Use any buttercream that you’d like. We used our delicious Classic Vanilla Buttercream Recipe.
After frosting the cake, we allowed it to crust for a few minutes and then smoothed over it with a simple Viva brand paper towel. (We use Viva brand because it has no quilting or impressions.) You can smooth however you’d like!
For the buttercream leaves we used a Wilton 352 leaf tip, and then for the vines we used a small round Wilton 2. (Any small round tip will do!)
Our pumpkin stems are simple brown jimmies.
This pumpkin border was so much fun… it only took a few minutes! That’s my kind of decoration.
Now let’s take a look at the big picture!!!
More Halloween Cake Decorating and Recipe Ideas to Share!
Update 10/20: We have SO many more Halloween Cake tutorials and videos to share! Don’t miss our roundup of the BEST Halloween Cakes HERE!: Best Halloween Cake Designs and Ideas
We would also love for you to check out our collection of favorite FALL RECIPES! We have everything from pumpkin and spice cakes to caramel cakes, gingerbread cake, and more! You can find them all here: Sharing the BEST Cake Recipes for Fall!
I hope that you enjoyed this tutorial– be sure to whip up a ghost trick or treater topper or pumpkin patch sometime soon!! (Or at least, go buy a bag of Halloween candy to celebrate the fact that you have something new to put in your Halloween file!)
My Cake School- Favorite Online Cake Decorating Tutorials, Recipes, and More!
Thanks so much for stopping by! We’d love for you to also check out our Recipes Section for a full listing of our favorite cake and frosting recipes! Recipes Section
We also have lots more fun free cake tutorials in our Free Tutorials Section!
And finally, if you’d like to lean even more about cake decorating, we’d love to have you as a member of My Cake School! Members of our site have full access to every cake decorating video we’ve made over the last several years. That’s hundreds of cake videos! You can find all of the details here!: My Cake School Membership
This is too cute! Love the bucket and bow!
Omgoodness….she is so cute. Great ideas!!!
I absolutely love this…can’t wait to do (try to do :) myself. Thanks so much for sharing! :)
Greetings Melissa!
This cake is FANTASTIC!!! I love it. Please tell me what the stems are made from. They look like chocolate sprinkles but I wanted to be sure.
Thanks!
~ Dawnuelle
Looovely!!!
FANTASTIC!!!! Thank you soooo much for sharing your idea’s with us I’ll be making this for my granddaughter She’ll love it xx
Thanks for the nice comments. Yes, the pumpkin stems are chocolate sprinkles.
Sooooooo cute. What was used to make the orange top of the cake that the cake topper is standing on?
Orange sanding sugar is on top of the cake.
The ghost topper looks amazing, its so cute! and the pumpkin patch detail.. wow.
So cute! I really love the pumpkin patch border, such a great idea!
oooooh geepers that ghost topper is SO DARN CUTE!! She doesn’t scare me at all…what does scare me is the fact that I would and can eat this whole cake up lickety split and not feel bad at all! GREAT topper tutorial!!!!!
Super Cute….I love it. :)
Absolutely darling!
Love it!!!
I’m not big into the scarey side of halloween, but I have to say THIS IS WAY CUTE!
Did you use your Fluffy Buttercream on this cake?
Hi, yes we did.
I love it! This is soooo cute. I’m gonna make this for Halloween.
Super cute.. I can’t wait to try this cake.. The ghost is just adorable. Thanks for sharing.
i was wondering… how many layers is that? 3 or 4??? and is it an 8 or 9 inch circle? it’s so cute, i’m gonna try it this weekend! :)
Thanks!!
Erica–this is a 6″ round—two fat layers (so, the cake was right around 4″ in height) – Thanks for the question, I should have included that info–
This is adorable!
Holy cow, Is this just that cutest cake!!!
I was actually browsing looking for a birthday cake idea for a friend, but when I came across this, I knew I’d found the cake I’ll be making for the bake auction at my kids’ school’s fall festival! Thank you for sharing scuba wonderful idea!!! This makes me want to skip work and go shopping for pumpkin candy!!
*such, not scuba, lol. Auto correct strikes again! :)
Thanks Kristen–love the random auto-correct words ;0) — I hope you have scuba a good time making this!
Super super cute!!!! Love it!!
That is so adorable.
So cute! I was looking for an idea for the school fall festival cake walk. I think I found my cake. Thanks.
I love it! So creative and cute! I just need the ingredients. What a great idea for a bake sale or cake walk. Thank you for the steps and photos in making this adorable cake and topper.
That is ABSOLUTELY ADORABLE!!!!! Melissa, you are just the best!
Thanks for sharing this one. I can’t wait to try it!!!!!! :O
I just love this! Definitely going to give it a try…
This is absolutely adorable & I will definitely make it. Thank you for your wonderful tutorials!!
Just made this with my 8 year old as a mother daughter project. We had a blast! Such a cute idea. Thanks for sharing this wonderful tutorial!!
I’m feeling an “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown!” pumpkin patch cake inspired by this one–love it!
This is sooooo cute and simple to do thanks for all your wonderful ideas!
OH SO CUTE!!! Now I am going to have to have a Halloween party!!!
soo cute love it!!!!
I’m not really into the scarey halloween, but this is so cute. I think my Mom would enjoy it at the nursing center. So, I just might have to try this one :)
This is so cute!!!
I just love this one. It’s soooo cute. will definitely give this one a try.
Thankyou so much, I read your tutorial and managed to do a version of your lovely ghostie! Many thanks!
Well, I tried it. I’m the same Brenda as up above…just divided my cookie-ing and my cake-ing into two not very frequently updated blogs. Some months are better than others. Anyway, I finished a cake sorta, kinda like yours. I made the layers white (vanilla flav), orange (orange flav) and yellow (lemon flav). I think my Mom will totally get a kick out of this cute idea…and she loves me so maybe she won’t notice that I almost dropped the cake and think I got it a weeee bit outta kelter. Thank you SO much for the idea!!!! Now, one more to thank a school principal for my “boo-ti-ful” little office at her school (I travel) and she was VERY kind. Want to put a little desk behind Missy Ghost Girl, but think I better leave well enough alone:)
Just thought you might like to see my Mom with her cake that I posted. Thank you for such a wonderful idea…one that I could attempt and one that would bring joy to an aging parent.
Brenda–I you did such a GREAT job!! The ghost is just as sweet as can be. I loved reading your blog and seeing the picture of you with your mom. (Just want to make sure that everyone knows that they can click on your name to be carried to your website) :0) — Thanks for sharing!
My husband wants me to make him a couple of cakes for his Halloween Bake sell at work. I have to make this one. It’s so stinkin cute! Thank you for the awesome tutorial.
That is the cutest thing…you have awesome ideas
I’m going to try to make this on Saturday for my work peeps. They are going through cake withdrawl. LOL
Ok I tired it…while it’s not as good looking as your’s it’s pretty cool. If you click on my name you can see it.
I have my ghost made. It looks pretty good so far. Can’t wait to do the rest.:-))
This is so cute. I was watching KHQA.com today on internet. They had reporter in a bakery doing Halloween Cake Decorating. I have made three Fall cakes so far this week for our cake walk at the fall festival and i have made 48 cupcakes that I will decorate on Saturday. This ghost cake is adorable. I made the pumpkin cake they had on KHQA today and it turned out so cute. Cake decorating is in my blood. I cannot wait to try to make the little ghost.
I made two of these wonderful little ghost cakes. One went to my husband’s work. The people in the office were reluctant to cut it, because it was too cute! The other went to our family hayride, bonfire, cookout. It was a hit with everyone, but my thirty year old son was this cake’s greatest admirer!
Janet, so glad to hear that you made two ghost cakes and that they were a hit! Thanks to everyone else whose comments I am just now seeing! It’s so nice to hear feedback from tutorials!! ;0)
Such a cute cake!
Beyond adorable!! Love, love, love this!
Hi Melissa,
As usual, this is super cute and I love it. I have a couple of questions:
1. Do you think a cake pop would work or would the fondant be too heavy?
2. Can you think of an alternative to the wire? I’d like to make these as cupcake toppers and I’d like the kids to be able to eat them too and am concerned about the kids trying to eat the wire. (maybe I’m paranoid??)
Thanks!
Melissa, you are so awesome! Thank you
Love this cake.. I am a newbie to your site, am making this for this Saturday. I don’t understand the straw anchor reference. Could you explain that?
Hello Kathy– I’m glad that you are making this! The lollipop stick in this design not only acts to support the arms and head, but it also is longer than the figure itself. This is good because it acts as an anchor and holds the topper in position, so that our ghost won’t tilt to the right or left. Sometimes, my anchor just isn’t as long as I’d like. When this happens, I slide a thin cocktail/stir straw over the lollipop stick to elongate it. If you cut the straw to the height of the cake, it will not only keep the ghost anchored, but it will keep it from sinking. In this case though, the ghost isn’t very heavy and so that probably wouldn’t be much of a concern. (For heavier cake toppers, I always cut a straw…usually a wide bubble tea straw, to the same height as the cake a place directly beneath the figure to prevent it from sinking.)
Hope this answers your question!
@Jen–I’m sorry that I missed your question! I think that the cake pop idea could work. If the fondant seems a little too heavy and you are worried about the cake balls sliding down the stick, you could slide a marshmallow or gum drop up the stick so that it is just beneath the cake ball. This will help to keep the cake ball in place (I’ve done this before with mini cupcakes on sticks) –
As for the wires– I think that this could work. Since you will be using small pieces of white fondant, I think they are more likely to hold their shape. If you form them around a lollipop for instance to get the shape of the head, and then remove the lollipop, and stand them up to dry, they may stay. If not, you may have to fill the ghosts with bits of paper towel or place back onto the lollipops until they firm up some more.
Melissa,
Thanks! I hadn’t thought of propping up the fondant with paper towels to see if it would dry that way. Great idea.
I’ve decided to try to make your chocolate spider invasion cake for a halloween party.
I made a variation on your birdcage cake for mother’s day and it was a huge hit. We took it to a restaurant for our brunch and our waiter loved it and kept going on about it. I posted it in your gallery in case you’re interested in seeing it. https://www.mycakeschool.com/gallery/gum-paste-fondant/custom-toppers-figure-modeling-gallery/animals/jens-mothers-day-birdcage-cake/
Love the blog!
Hi Jen–I’m so glad that you are making the spider invasion cake–it’s a fun one! ;0) — Just checked out your birdcage cake and LOVE it!! Just precious–no wonder the waiter went on and on. The birds are the cutest!
Melissa; wondering what color green you used for the vines/leaves. Thank you.
I was wondering if orange frosting was buttercream frosting?
Hi Paula, The orange on the top of the cake is orange sprinkles.
Love the little ghost with the trick or treat pumpkin bucket.
Before my Mom passed away I saw this and made one for my Momma….my boo-ti-ful girl. She absolutely loved it and giggled when she saw it. It is one of my favorite memories! Thank you for sharing this tutorial!
That is so nice, love this sweet picture and am so glad that you made this cake for her! What a special memory.