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Updated on December 8, 2021 by · This post may contain affiliate links ·

Cruella Birthday Cake Tutorial

Skill level: Intermediate

Bring your punk rock fashionistas to this party, we're making a Cruella birthday cake! I got the chance to make this cake for an artistic little girl that's really into the new Disney movie and I had a blast making this.

This cake features a flowing edible red dress, newsprint graffiti, and a polka dot patterned cake inside, making the cake slices really stand out and be dalmatian-themed. This cake will knock the socks off your guests and inspire youngsters to explore their fashion interests.

Please note: the arcylic Cruella cake topper is not part of this tutorial. You can get the downloadable template to make it here (scroll to the bottom and click on the 'free download' button)

32:48 Minutes of Instruction

What You Will Learn

  • Learn the internal structure to support the extra tall double barrel cake
  • How to make the flowing edible dress
  • Learn how to hand-paint and add premade graffiti elements to the cake
  • How to make the polka-dot patterned cake

Cake decorated with an edible red dress, newsprint graffiti and hand painted details to look like Cruella movie

Tutorial Chapters

  1. Making the cake pops 0:37
  2. Making the white cakes 5:38
  3. Adding the batter 6:45
  4. Making the wafer paper dress 9:31
  5. Airbrushing the dress 10:23
  6. Frosting the cakes 11:42
  7. Making the structure 16:07
  8. Stacking the cakes 18:08
  9. Covering the cake in fondant 19:57
  10. Painting the cake 25:33
  11. Adding the wafer paper newsprint 27:45
  12. Adding the dress 30:18

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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.