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Published on September 1, 2021 by · This post may contain affiliate links ·

Topsy Turvy Tea Party Birthday Cake

Skill level: Intermediate

For Avalon's birthday party this year, the theme was cats and tea parties, or a "kit-tea" party. Avalon didn't want cats on the cake (because why would cats eat cats?) so we went with mice, teapots and lots and lots of bubbles.

In this tutorial, you'll learn how to create a beautiful tea party cake with a classic gravity-defying topsy turvy design with a twist, there's a floating element to each tier allowing bubbles or flowers to be put between the tiers. You'll learn how to create this structure which opens up possibilities for all sorts of interesting designs.

There's a lot to cover in this tutorial, so let's get our tools together and let's get started!

1:14:52 Minutes of Instruction

What You Will Learn

  • Learn how to create a gravity-defying topsy turvy cake
  • How to sculpt and create mice, teapots and bubbles
  • Learn how to make a floating teapot stream and wafer paper sails

Tutorial Chapters

  1. Overview of the materials 0:42
  2. Making the structure 3:16
  3. Covering in fondant 16:25
  4. Stacking the cakes 24:01
  5. Making the chocolate bubbles 25:25
  6. Making the wafer paper sails 28:44
  7. Making the teacups 33:37
  8. Making the teapot base & spout 41:38
  9. Adding the teapot 46:30
  10. Making the water ganache 56:38
  11. Adding the water ganache drip 57:14
  12. Adding the teacups & mice: part 1 58:34
  13. Making the water spout 1:03:55
  14. Adding the teacups & mice: part 2 1:06:10
  15. Painting the decorations 1:09:29
  16. Adding the chocolate bubbles 1:11:46
  17. Attaching the wafer paper fan 1:15:05

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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.