Cake Pulls

Cake pulls are an inexpensive way to personalize any party!  Cake or cupcake pulls can be fun for any age appropriate occasion such as birthdays, anniversaries, princess and fairy parties, engagement and baby showers.

Originally cake pulls were silver Victorian charms attached to ribbons, and placed inside wedding cakes. The bridesmaids and other attendants pulled the ribbons and charms out of the cake.  Each charm tells a fortune for the future, and was kept as a party favor.

If you look closely at my last article’s picture on creating a castle cake, you will see that there are long lavender ribbons around the bottom of the cake.  These are cake pulls that I made and tucked into the flowers.  I prefer not to put them in the cake as they are messy to pull out of the frosting, but that can be the fun part.  You decide.

How to make cake pulls:

1. Decide the theme, color and how many cake pulls you want to make.
2. Buy the appropriate number of silver or plastic charms you are going to need to make your cake pulls.  You can individually choose uniquely different ones, or you can buy them all they same.  I find it easiest to buy the charms I am going to use, and then make up the sayings but you can do it the opposite way it you want.  Also, purchase a roll of thin satin ribbon in the color of your choice.  It has to be thin enough to thread through the charm.
3. Create your fortunes and print or hand write them out on paper.  Remember different fonts and colors are a fun way to dress these up.  Using a paper cutter, cut the fortunes in thin strips.  Then using a paper punch, put a hole in both ends of the paper, carefully avoid cutting the printed words.
4. Cut your ribbon the length you want your cake pull to be.  I like my cake pulls to double as little necklaces so they can be worn for the rest of the party, so I cut mine long enough to go over the party goers head after it is tied.
5. Assemble your cake pull by threading the charm onto the ribbon.  I tie mine in the center so it doesn’t move around on the ribbon.  Once you tie the charm on, then take the ends of the ribbon and tie the paper fortune on.  Double knot it.

The following charm is a pacifier bought in a pack of 18 different colored charms for $1.00 from the dollar store.  It makes a cute cake pull for a baby shower.  This one is tied with a blue ribbon.

Next time I will be talking about how to create cake pull fortunes and will be posting fortunes for fairy party cake pulls.  Have fun!