• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Cake Journal

  • Cake Lounge
    • Easy Embossed Cookies Recipe
    • How to Make Heart-Shaped Cake with Buttercream Roses
  • Desserts
    • Best 3 Cookie Scoop Sizes and How to Use Them?
    • Babycakes Cake Pop Maker Review and Tutorial
  • Recipes
    • Traditional Castella Cake Recipe
    • Stabilized Whipped Cream Frosting (Easy Recipe)
    • Best Frozen-Themed Cake Ideas with Images
  • Tips & tools
    • What to Do With Cake Scraps? (8 Easy Recipes)
    • Luster Dust: If You Don’t Know About It, You Need To!
    • How To Use Edible Glue and How to Make It
    • How to Use Russian Piping Tips and Tutorial
    • What Is Wafer Paper and How to Use It? (Video Tutorials)
  • Tutorials
    • How To Make Royal Icing (Easy Recipe)
    • How to Flood Cookies with Royal Icing?
    • How To Use Candy Molds Properly
    • How to Make Cake Pops: Easy Step-by-Step Tutorial
    • Fondant On Cookies: Easy Way To Decorate
  • About Us
  • Contact

How to Make a Cowboy Hat Cake – Part 1

by Louise Leave a Comment

Cowboy Hat Cake

As long as I’ve been doing cakes, cowboy themed cakes have been popular! They never seem to go out of style so this week I want to share with you How to Make a Cowboy Hat Cake.

This cake can stand alone (as you can see in my picture) or you could place it on top of a larger cake for more servings or more creativity in the design – such as on top of a Hay Bale Cake or a Bandana Covered cake.

So let’s get started! Here’s what you’ll need*:

  • 6″ Half Ball Cake baked in a Wilton Sports Ball pan or another 6″ hemisphere pan
  • Buttercream
  • Off-set Spatula & Knife
  • Brown Fondant (2 shades)
  • Rolling Pins (2 small ones)
  • Apple Corer
  • Fondant Smoother
  • Pastry Wheel or Pizza Cutter
  • Tylose
  • Ribbon Cutter (or knife & ruler)
  • 8″ and 10″ cardboard cake rounds
  • Shortening

*Please note that these are the things you’ll need for both part 1 and part 2 of this tutorial!!

Step 1: Place your cake onto an 8″ cardboard cake round. You need to do this so you can easily move it around for carving, filling and frosting it.

How to Make a Cowboy Hat Cake 01

Step 2: Carve off the sides of the cake – approximately half an inch on each side and 1/3 of the way up. It’s hard to describe in measurements but as you can see below, you’re aiming to get the shape of a hat (minus the brim). I cut with a slight curve to give it the real cowboy hat shape.

How to Make Cowboy Hat Cake 02

Step 3: You could possibly skip this step, but since this cake was going to stand alone and not be sitting on top of a larger cake, I wanted to fill it with frosting. I cut the cake in half cross-ways and filled it with a generous pile of buttercream.

How to Make a Cowboy Hat Cake 03

Step 4: Put the top back on and smooth it out on all sides.

How to Make a Cowboy Hat Cake 04

Step 5: Now you’ll need to take an apple corer and shave out the top of the hat, going parallel to the sides you cut off. You could also do this with just a knife, but the apple corer gives the top of the hat the perfect rounded center.

How to Make a Cowboy Hat Cake 05

Here’s a better picture of the apple corer:

Apple Corer

Step 6: Now you’ll want to crumb coat the entire surface of the hat. I used my off-set spatula to do this.

How to Make a Cowboy Hat Cake 06

Step 7: This cake is going to be sitting on the brim part of the hat, so after all the carving and frosting was done, I cut off the excess cake board from around the bottom.

How to Make a Cowboy Hat Cake 10

Step 8: After it was completely covered and the board trimmed, I popped the cake into the refrigerator or freezer! You’ll want to let it chill in the frig for several hours or put it in the freezer for 20-30 minutes.

Whew… you’re halfway there! Stay tuned  for part 2 of How to Make a Cowboy Hat Cake!

Happy Caking!

Rose

Previous Post: « How to Make Poinsettia Cupcakes
Next Post: Cowboy Hat Cake Tutorial – Part 2 »

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Primary Sidebar

Search Recipes on Cake Journal:

About Us

Kristen is the author of Cake Journal and a graduate of the Professional Baking program at Renton Technical College. She has worked as a pastry chef at a top Seattle restaurant and loves sharing her passion for baking amazing cakes on this site.

Contact Me

Privacy Policy

As Seen On:

Follow Us on Pinterest

Follow Us on Facebook

Copyright © 2025 · Cake Journal