Making tiny dollhouse food is kind of fun, and since I used to make custom cakes it’s only natural that I would want to make some little cakes out of polymer clay to go with the house I’m working on.
I don’t know where I’m going to use them, but making them is a good way to be able to customize the colors and have them match a room’s theme.
To make 1:12 scale cakes for dollhouses, you should start with a round disc that’s the correct size, then decorate it with miniature flowers and leaves. Since these are so small, it’s easiest to use colored polymer clay so that you don’t have to paint anything after they’re baked. A 6″ diameter cake will be 1/2″ across when created in a 1:12 scale.
What size should a 1:12 scale miniature cake be?
For a 1:12 scale cake, the width would be based on this chart:
| Real cake diameter | 1:12 scale Miniature cake diameter |
| 6″ | 1/2″ |
| 8″ | 2/3″ |
| 10″ | 5/6″ |
| 12″ | 1″ |
| 14″ | 1 1/6″ |
| 16″ | 1 1/3″ |
| 18″ | 1 1/2″ |
Honestly, though, because real cakes aren’t ever going to be precisely the sizes that the cake pans say they are, you can be a little loose with the precision on this.
The important thing is to not have an enormous cake that’s totally out of proportion, but if you’re a little off once you put it all together, it will be fine.
When you’re deciding how tall each tier should be, you’re also in luck, because cakes aren’t all exactly the same height anymore.
It used to be that a 4″ tier was the standard, and that’s still used to calculate serving counts, but most cake decorators make the tiers different heights now.
And if you look at a one-layer sheet cake, those are even smaller. So there’s a wide range of heights, and as long as you don’t need each one to be exactly the same, you can be off a little and it will look fine.
| Real cake tier height | 1:12 scale Miniature cake tier height |
| 2″ | 1/4″ |
| 4″ | 1/3″ |
| 6″ | 1/2″ |
| 8″ | 2/3″ |
So a regular 8″ diameter cake tier should be about 2/3″ wide and 1/3″ tall. If you make them a little smaller or taller it will still look fine.
For an article about how to make miniature chocolate chip cookies, click here.
How to make a miniature polymer clay cake.
Start with a colored polymer clay so that you don’t have to paint them later.
Roll out the polymer clay to the thickness that you need it to be.
Use a small round cutter to make the shape of the cake the size that you want, then adjust the round disc by pressing and shaping it slightly if you need to.
Using polymer clay in contrasting colors, make tiny flowers and leaves to decorate the miniature tier.
Apply the decorations to the tier using a needle point clay tool.
Bake the polymer clay in an oven according to the manufacturer’s instructions. Generally, it’s going to be 275F for about 15 minutes per 1/4″ thickness of clay, but check the label on the clay you’re using.
Make as many tiny cakes as you have room for!
You can also use a clay extruder tool with a star tip to make a tiny ridged tube, then cut that into little sections.
If you attach the sections to the edge of a mini cake tier it will look like a piped border around the top or the bottom of the cake tier.
You can do the same with small balls that you attach around the top of the cake to make the border.
The mini flower molds can be purchased on my website here: Mini silicone flower molds
For these cakes, I used the smallest tiny rose to fit the 1:12 scale, but any of the ones on this mold could be used for larger focal flowers.
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