Baking and Caking for Beginners: How to Make a Cupcake Stand

Build-A-Bear Cupcake Tower

Cupcake towers has been a trend at special events lately. I've looked at cupcake stands online and they can cost you from $20 to $70 depending on the design. So, here's a quick tutorial of how I make my cupcake stand. You can customize it to match your theme or whatever the occasion you are celebrating. Plus all the materials are very cheap. I think it cost me less than $5 for everything. The foam boards were on sale at $1 each and I had the ribbons on hand already.

TOOLS I USED:

Foam Board
Cake Circles - 1 x 8", 1 x 10", 1 x 12"
Pencil
X-acto Knife
Glue
Ribbon
Two (2) Cornmeal or Baby Formula Cans or any pair of tall cans - about 4" high
Double-sided tape
Scrapbook paper or Gift-wrapper (optional)

HOW TO:

Start by tracing the cake circles on the foam board. I used 3 sizes to serve as tiers - 8", 10" and 12".

I used and X-acto knife to cut out the circles. I made two (2) of each size and glued them together to make the tiers thicker.

You can use your scrapbook paper or gift-wrapper to cover the cake circles. Glue the ribbon (matching your theme or cupcakes) around the edge of each tier. Then you can use your scrapbook paper/giftwrapper or ribbon to wrap around your cans that will serve as divider.

Then you can assemble your cupcake stand. You can use double-sided tape to make sure they stay in place. Just keep in mind that once you have assembled your cupcake stand with cakes on it, do not move it around so much.

If you like, you can put a cake on the top tier. But I would suggest for it to be no bigger than 6". The cake I used for the Build-A-Bear cupcake tower is only a 4"-cake. And I just reused the same cupcake stand by replacing the ribbons and wrapping the cans in black paper to match the pink and black theme of the party.