I'm already looking ahead to making my daughter's first birthday cake in October. The party theme will be cupcakes, and I'd like to make an actual cake, with a gumpaste cupcake topper.

I found a great tutorial on how to construct a cupcake out of clay. Do you think I could use the same steps while using gumpaste instead of clay?

For clarity, here is the link to the clay tutorial

So can this be done??

TIA!

Sure, that looks like it would work. I'd make the base and let it dry before putting the other layers on top.

Another idea would be to use a real cupcake as a topper, regular or jumbo, and then give it to your daughter as a smash cake

I don't see why you couldn't! I like the idea of the real cupcake as the smash cake too though! When in october....my son will be 1 in october also!

Absolutely, I do it all the time. I purchase polymer clay books to get ideas.