15 Beautiful Moana Cake Ideas and Free Cake Toppers
Planning a Moana birthday party for your little adventurer? These Moana cake ideas will bring the magic of Motunui to your celebration with tropical colors, ocean-inspired decorations, and everyone’s favorite characters! From elaborate fondant cakes featuring Moana and Maui to simple buttercream designs with crashing waves, palm trees, and island flowers, there’s something for every skill level and party theme. Whether you’re dreaming of a stunning tiered centerpiece or a cute homemade birthday cake, these creative designs are sure to make a splash!
You’ll also find adorable Moana cupcakes, pull-apart cupcake cakes, and themed treats inspired by memorable scenes from the movies. Some designs are surprisingly easy to recreate at home, while others offer plenty of inspiration for your favorite cake decorator. And don’t miss the free printable Moana cupcake toppers included in this collection! They’re an easy, budget-friendly way to transform ordinary cupcakes into party-ready treats without spending hours decorating.
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Moana Sheet Cake Designs
Meeting the Wave
This Moana sheet cake has a beach made of crushed vanilla wafers and a wave made of candy melts. It’s really cool!
- Special Supplies Needed: seashell candy molds
- Time to Make: 5 hours
- Skill: Beginner
Beach Cake with Chocolate Finger Border
Chocolate fingers and leis surround this beach scene cake.
- Special Supplies Needed: chocolate fingers; a lei
- Time to Make: 3.5 hours
- Skill: Beginner
Moana Doll Cake
Rosanna Pansino used a doll dress cake mold to create a grass-skirt Moana doll cake – and it’s actually pretty easy! I did something similar with Mirabel Madrigal for Lily’s Encanto birthday party. Here’s a video of how it was done:
- Special Supplies Needed: doll dress cake pan
- Time to Make: 3 hours
- Skill: Intermediate
Ocean Wave Cake
Asma Qureshi on YouTube shows you how to create a beautiful, edible ocean wave using blue isomalt! It’ll work perfectly for a cake where baby Moana is walking out to the ocean and it moves for her.
- Special Supplies Needed: blue isomalt nibs
- Time to Make: 5 hours
- Skill: Intermediate
Baby Moana Birthday Cake
This video from Zoe’s Fancy Cakes shows every little step of how she achieved this movie-realistic cake in the shape of baby Moana’s head! Color dusting is a big part of her method, and she uses bits of fondant under her main drape of fondant to achieve the lips and nose.
- Special Supplies Needed: skin tone fondant
- Time to Make: 2 hours
- Skill: Intermediate-Advanced
Moana Cupcakes
Cupcake Cake
You don’t need a tutorial to make this cupcake cake. It’s easy! Just arrange the cupcakes in whatever shape/number you’d like, frost them shades of blue to look like the ocean, and add some character toys wherever you like! Sprinkle some wafer-crumb sand on one end for added beach effect.
Heart of Te’Fiti and Maui’s Hook Cupcakes
These super-simple cupcakes show off two of the most important items in the first Moana film: Maui’s hook and the heart of Te’Fiti.
- Special Supplies Needed: coconut flakes
- Time to Make: 2 hours
- Skill: Beginner
Maui Cake
A Moana and Maui birthday cake can be simple, but tedious. This two-tier cake has a leaf skirt surrounding the bottom and a simple brown-skin fondant covering the top with Maui’s tattoos drawn all over it. Do yourself a favor and top it with a toy hook instead of trying to make your own out of chocolate!
- Special Supplies Needed: Maui’s hook toy
- Time to Make: 6 hours
- Skill: Intermediate
Tamatoa Cake
This is by far the most insanely difficult Moana birthday cake on this list… But if you’ve got the skill, it’s 100% worth it. Look at that beautiful crab cake (LOL)!
- Special Supplies Needed: a lot… check her post for links!
- Time to Make: at least a week
- Skill: Expert
Made-to-Order Cake Options
Currently, Walmart has one cake available using licensed Moana images and toppers: a simple sheet cake. Wal-mart’s frosting is tasty and their cakes are reasonably priced if you don’t have time to make your own! Last time I checked, they were not showing this cake (or any Moana cakes) in their main catalogue, but it could still be ordered online.
Special Candle for the Cake
You can go for the regular stick candles in your required quantity, or you can get this adorable 2.5-inch candle that doubles as a cake topper featuring Moana and her pet pig Pua!
Cake Toppers and Decorations
Walmart’s Toppers via Amazon
If you have the skill to copy Walmart’s cake and just need the toppers, you can get them separately! Walmart doesn’t generally carry Moana-specific toppers out on the shelves. But if you’re looking to purchase just the licensed toppers they use in their custom bakery cakes, you can buy it from Amazon!
Edible Cake Topper
You can purchase an edible image on Etsy that fit perfectly on top of a round frosted cake. If you’re looking for an easy DIY Moana cake that still looks nice, this is the way to go!
Cupcake Ring Toppers
For very young children, sometimes cupcakes are easier than trying to get them to sit down with a slice of cake. They’ll love these Moana rings on top of their cupcakes that they can wear home, and you’ll love how easy it is to make your cupcakes Moana-themed.
Cake Figures
There are a few different Moana figurine sets available, and which one you should get depends on what kind of scene you’re trying to set up on your Moana cake. Some of the playsets don’t come with a baby Moana figurine or Tamatoa, and to me, that’s a dealbreaker! I recommend this Moana figure playset because you’ll have lots of options for decorating, and your kiddo will have a blast playing with these high-quality figures after the party.
Free Printable Moana Cake Toppers
If you’re trying to spend as little money as possible on your Moana birthday cake, I’ve got a free printable PDF of Moana characters you can use as cake toppers! Just print them out on cardstock at Best/Fine quality, cut them out, and attach them to flat sandwich toothpicks. You’ll be able to create your own little movie scene on top of the cake.
If you’d like to get transparent PNGs of each character so you can upload it to Design Space or any other Print-Then-Cut-type software for quick and easy cutting, you can get them with the premium listing here!
Tips to Make Your Own Moana Cake
Watch the movie
Draw your inspiration not just from other people’s cakes, but from images from the movie that strike you! There’s the sand, the ocean, her pets Pua and Hei Hei, Maui’s hook, and so many other little things that can inspire you.
Plan it out
You don’t want to go into cake-making mode without any real plan to go off of. Plan out your cake in whatever way works for you, even if it’s just a basic sketch of what you want to achieve. I like to create my design right down to its proportions in Photoshop.
Play to your strengths
If you’ve never, ever worked with fondant before, don’t do something crazy and start a custom-designed, three-tier birthday cake. You don’t want to pull an all-nighter, stress yourself out, and be grumpy during the party. I might know this from experience…
Get your supplies well in advance
From basic supplies to toppers and other Moana cake decorations, order these things weeks in advance. This ensures you have everything you need before it’s time to get started.
Make it ahead
I never recommend making a cake the day of the party. Depending on its complexity, the day before might be too late, too. If you’re using fondant accents that need to dry, make them several days ahead. Bake the cakes the evening before you want to get the cake frosted. Only leave what you absolutely have to for the day of the party!
