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Updated on December 7, 2021 by · This post may contain affiliate links ·

Lumberjack Cake

Skill level: Intermediate

Want to know the secrets to this plaid lumberjack cake that has become an internet sensation? You might think you've got it figured out but the process might surprise you! Be one of the first to create this original and super-trendy cake design! This tutorial teaches you everything from baking to structure!

Pair this tutorial up with our famous vanilla cake recipe and you'll be off to chopping down those taste buds of lumber laborers everywhere!

35:36 Minutes of Instruction

The Shorter Version is below

What You Will Learn

  • How to create a plaid cake design on the inside
  • You'll learn how to create the rustic bark on the outside of the cake
  • A cool trick to make a gravity-defying axe
  • How to make a realistic woodgrain texture on the top of the cake

Tutorial Chapters

  1. Making the cake batter 0:28
  2. Preparing the cake pans 2:00
  3. Assembling the cake 4:50
  4. Crumb coating the cake 13:44
  5. Making the axe 14:56
  6. Adding the feet to the bottom of the cake 21:02
  7. Covering the top of the cake and making the woodgrain 22:02
  8. Making the bark texture 25:40
  9. Painting details 31:06

This is the preview

Watch the full tutorial

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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.