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Published on January 31, 2018 by · This post may contain affiliate links ·

Semi-Naked Cake Tutorial

Skill level: Newb

Liz Marek's take on the naked cake trend, updated to incorporate some modern trends in 2018, mainly the semi-naked look and fresh fruit and berries.

41:33 Minutes of Instruction

What You Will Learn

  • How to create a modern semi-naked cake design
  • Learn how to add gold leaf to cake tiers
  • How to make fresh flowers food-safe for placing on cakes
  • How to arrange flowers on a cake creatively and build interest

Tutorial Chapters

  1. Prepping the cake 0:17
  2. Torting & crumb coat 5:14
  3. Torting & crumbcoating the small cake 9:57
  4. Final coat of buttercream 12:02
  5. Mixing buttercream colors 16:28
  6. Making buttercream petals 17:51
  7. Tips for cake delivery 20:21
  8. Adding cake supports 22:24
  9. Adding gold leaf to cake 24:32
  10. Stacking the cake 27:53
  11. Prepping fresh flowers 32:47
  12. Making fresh flowers food-safe 34:27
  13. Making a floral arrangement 35:51
  14. Making apricot glaze drip 39:35
  15. Final details 40:21

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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.