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Published on March 1, 2023 by · This post may contain affiliate links ·

Volcano Cake Tutorial

Skill level: Intermediate

In this tutorial, you will learn how to create a realistic sculpted volcano cake, complete with special effects and a real smoke-like effect!

You will learn how to sculpt and create a realistic looking volcano mountain, how to create the glowing lava effect, how to work with isomalt and incorporate in LED lights, a realistic smoke-like effect and how to carve out the dinosaur cave.

40:43 Minutes of Instruction

What You Will Learn

  • How to create a realistic volcano cake
  • Learn how to work with isomalt and LED lights to create flowing lava
  • How to create a realistic smoke-like effect

Cake sculpted to look like a volcano

Tutorial Chapters

  1. Stacking The Cakes 0:24
  2. Carving The Cakes 4:43
  3. Crumb Coating And Sculpting 7:26
  4. Setting Up The Lights 14:19
  5. Covering The Cake In Chocolate 25:38
  6. Paneling The Cake 27:26
  7. Adding The Isomalt Lava 32:36
  8. Adding The Final Details 38:55

This is the preview

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About Liz Marek

Liz Marek is a professional cake artist and recipe developer who has been teaching baking and cake decorating since 2008. She founded Artisan Cake Company in Portland, Oregon in 2009 and now runs Sugar Geek Show, where she publishes kitchen-tested recipes, food science explanations, and step-by-step tutorials.

Liz is best known for sculpted and hyperrealistic cakes. She won Netflix's Is It Cake? Holiday 2 in 2025 with a hyperrealistic Santa cake, and has competed on and won Food Network cake competitions. Cake Masters Magazine named her one of the top 10 cake artists in 2017. She is the author of Artisan Cake Company's Visual Guide to Cake Decorating and a graduate of the Oregon Culinary Institute.

Her focus is on explaining not just how a recipe works but why it works, so bakers can troubleshoot instead of guess. Every recipe on this site is tested before it's published.

Liz teaches full-length cake tutorials, including sculpted and hyperrealistic cakes, at Sugar Geek University.