Rainbow Fiesta Cake with Cactus Toppers

Rainbow Fiesta Cake with Cactus Toppers – this cake was the perfect centerpiece for a fiesta-themed party! The rainbow buttercream ruffles, fondant cactus toppers and the bright ribbon bunting make for a perfectly festive birthday cake!

One of my most favorite and faithful clients, Rebecca, hosted a Fiesta themed party for her little girl and this was the cake for the day!

I’m gonna be (cake-decorator) honest with you and tell you that making all the colors of buttercream and having to use a zillion piping bags and washing that piping tip a dozen times is not fun. But – and this is a BIG “but” – it’s SO worth it to see the final effect.

Rainbow buttercream ruffles take me to my happy place every single time!

Rainbow Fiesta Cake with Cactus Toppers

Rebecca sent a photo of a similiar Fiesta cake but I really wanted to change things up. Instead of fondant ruffles (which take forever to make and are not fun to eat), I offered to do the buttercream. She thought that was a perfect idea!

So, I used Amercolor gel colors in in my vanilla buttercream to do all the ruffles. These are the colors I used:

Piping the ruffles was pretty easy using a Wilton #104 tip. I used disposable piping bags (doubled-up) so it was easy to rinse out the piping tip and load the next color! I started at the top and worked my way down.

This is the way I’ve always done ruffles but this time I had some trouble when I got near the bottom and the teal ruffles were a little messy. However, for this style of cake, I didn’t stress over it too much 🙂 If any of you pipe ruffles like this, I’d love to hear – do you start at the top or bottom of the cake?

Cactus Cake Toppers

The inspiration cake had a single cactus cake topper. However, Rebecca requested a 9″ round cake and the single cactus just looked lonely. So I ended up making a second cactus and a sombrero.

To make the cacti, I mixed tylose into green Satin Ice fondant and shaped them around a bamboo skewer. I used toothpicks on the inside to help support the arms of the cacti.

After they dried and hardened (overnight), I used melted lighter green candy melts to paint over the fondant. Before the candy melts hardened, I sprinkled them with white nonpariels for dimension extra character.

When I finished the cacti, the cake still didn’t seem complete and I didn’t like the bunting on the inspiration cake, so I brainstormed and finally it hit me – ribbon bunting! I’ve done something similiar here and I knew with lots of bright colored ribbon, I could get a topper I loved.

In the end, the rainbow ribbon bunting was perfect, if you ask me 😉 It was also really easy to make! I cut several strips of different colored ribbons and tied simple knots over and over again until I was happy with the look! Honestly, I could’ve added a dozen more and loved it but I didn’t want to go overboard.

You can get an idea of how to do a bunting topper like this here (different type of ribbon, but same idea).

Oh – one other detail. I used a “tan” colored buttercream on top to mimmick sand, then added some confetti sprinkles and more nonpariels.

Fiesta Cake Details

Last but not least, as mentioned above, this Fiesta Cake was a 9″ round cake. Magic Line pans are my go-to brand and I use them for 99% of my cake baking. The flavor was butter cake with vanilla buttercream.

Here are some of the supplies I used:

Bamboo skewers for the cacti and to hold the ribbon bunting.
Several colors of ribbon – get a variety pack here.
Jute Twine (to tie the ribbons on)
Satin Ice Green Fondant
Bright Green Candy Melts
White nonpariels
Confetti Sprinkles
Wilton #104 tip for piping ruffles
I have a tutorial here for how I cover the board in glitter paper with a ribbon border.

If you do a Fiesta themed party, you might also want to make some Cactus Pretzel Rods for your treats table or party favors! Click here for the tutorial.