Madonna Labubu Cake
Madonna’s Viral Labubu Birthday Cake: Creating a Bespoke Cake for Madonna in Siena
Creating a cake for a client with a very specific vision is always about listening carefully. Creating one for Madonna’s birthday, with only three days to bring that vision to life, was an entirely different kind of challenge.
When Madonna’s team contacted me directly about creating her birthday cake in Siena, they already knew exactly what they wanted: a giant pink Labubu, complete with baby-blue eyes, the words “Happy Birthday Madudu,” and a miniature version of Madonna’s iconic Jean Paul Gaultier cone bra.
The brief was incredibly specific. My job was to make sure every detail was exactly right.
And we had just three days to do it.
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The Brief for Madonna’s Labubu Birthday Cake
The design came directly from Madonna’s team, who worked closely with me throughout the entire process.
There was no room for approximation. The proportions, colors, facial details, texture, lettering and cone bra all needed to be faithful to the brief.
The finished cake was approximately 70 cm tall and 55 cm wide. Although it looked like an enormous Labubu, it was actually sculpted from cake rather than being a decorative figure placed on top of a traditional cake.
That meant that the structure underneath mattered just as much as the decoration on the outside.
Because the cake needed to be transported and ultimately moved by Madonna’s children at the celebration, I incorporated an internal structure to support the shape safely. In particular, I was conscious of the weight and proportions of the large Labubu head and the delicate transition between the head, chin and neck.
It needed to look playful, mischievous, and almost toy-like – but it also needed to function as a real cake.
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Creating the Texture of the Labubu Cake
One of the most important parts of making the cake convincing was the texture.
I didn’t want to simply cover the sculpted cake in smooth fondant and paint details onto it. The Labubu needed dimension and the layered texture that made the character recognizable.
I began with a textured buttercream layer.
Over that came textured fondant, or sugar paste, adding another level of surface detail. Then I added textured royal icing on top to build even more dimension.
Finally, I hand-painted tonal details into the surface, particularly through the fur, so that the texture would catch the light in the right way.
The result was a surface that changed as the light moved across it rather than looking flat.
For a cake like this, those small details make an enormous difference.
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Getting the Pink Exactly Right
The pink was another surprisingly technical part of the process.
It wasn’t enough to find the right shade of pink for the fondant. The same color needed to translate across three different mediums: buttercream, fondant and royal icing.
Each material behaves differently, so getting them to look like the same pink required careful color matching.
I prepared a color board with different shades of pink for Madonna’s team to choose from.
I remember sending it at around two in the morning.
About ten minutes later, I had their answer.
That was one of the things I loved about working with the team. They were incredibly responsive and involved in every detail. If I was awake and working, they were awake and working too.
And during a three-day commission, that kind of communication makes an enormous difference.
The same attention went into the baby-blue eyes, where the color was painted into the eyes to achieve the precise effect we
wanted.
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The Cone Bra: A Madonna Detail in Sugar
The cone bra was based on Madonna’s iconic Jean Paul Gaultier design from her Blonde Ambition era.
Again, this wasn’t something I was interpreting freely. Madonna’s team had very specific details they wanted, and those details mattered.
The challenge was to translate such an instantly recognizable fashion reference into the proportions and playful language of a Labubu cake.
The result was a surreal combination of two very recognizable worlds: Labubu and Madonna.
And then there was the lettering.
“Happy Birthday Madudu” was specifically supplied by Madonna’s team, bringing the whole concept together.
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Three Days, and a Lot of Very Late Nights
The cake arrived as a last-minute commission, which meant the entire project—from beginning to end—had to happen in approximately three days.
That meant very long nights in the laboratory.
I was working until two or three in the morning and then getting back up around six or seven to continue.
Normally, when I finish a cake, I move on to the next one. There isn’t much time to stop and think about what has just been created.
That was particularly true with this cake.
Once it was finished, there was still the question of getting it safely to Siena.
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Delivering the Cake During the Palio di Siena
The timing of Madonna’s birthday celebration created another logistical challenge.
Her birthday fell on the same day as the Palio di Siena, when the city becomes exceptionally difficult to access because of the event and the associated closures.
We couldn’t simply deliver the cake in the evening.
Instead, I had to make two separate trips: bringing the cake into Siena early in the morning, before the city closed down, returning to Florence, and then coming back later for the final setup.
For a cake of this size and structure, transportation is always something I take seriously. When the cake is also going to be moved at the event itself, stability becomes part of the design from the very beginning.
Everything has to arrive exactly as it left the laboratory.
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When Madonna’s Labubu Cake Went Viral
What happened next was something I couldn’t have planned for.
I didn’t actually realize how much attention the cake was receiving at first.
I had spent those three days almost entirely inside my own little world—working late into the night, checking details, communicating with the team and trying to finish the cake on time.
Then I moved on to the next project.
And suddenly people started contacting me to tell me that the cake was everywhere.
Madonna had shared photographs from her birthday celebration, and the cake began appearing in newspapers, television coverage and media around the world.
It was surreal.
People had incredibly strong reactions to it.
Some people were completely obsessed with it. Others found it slightly terrifying. I remember seeing reactions from people saying that it would haunt their nightmares.
Honestly, I loved that.
The cake was supposed to make an impression.
A giant pink Labubu wearing Madonna’s iconic cone bra isn’t exactly designed to be forgettable.
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Was Madonna’s Labubu Cake Really a $90,000 Cake?
There was a lot of speculation online about what Madonna’s birthday cake must have cost, with some of the numbers being thrown around reaching astonishing levels.
Let me clear up one thing: it was not a $90,000 cake.
I’m not going to reveal what the cake cost — that’s between me and my client — but I will say that if I were charging $90,000 for a birthday cake, I would be a considerably wealthier woman than I am today!
What the speculation did remind me of, though, is how little people understand about what actually goes into pricing a bespoke cake. A cake like this isn’t simply priced by its size or by the number of servings. There are hours of design, sculpting, structural work, sugar work, finishing, materials, logistics, transport, installation, and, in this particular case, an extraordinarily short three-day deadline.
I wrote more about how bespoke cakes are actually priced — and why the number on the final invoice can be very different from what people imagine — in my post about cake pricing.
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The Madonna Labubu Cake in the Press
The cake quickly became part of the international coverage of Madonna’s birthday celebration in Siena.
From Italian newspapers to international fashion and entertainment publications, the giant pink Labubu cake became one of the most talked-about details of the celebration.
This story was covered by publications including:
Seeing the cake appear in newspapers, television coverage and media around the world was surreal. I had spent the previous three days focused almost entirely on making sure every detail was right.
By the time the cake was finished and delivered, I had already moved on to the next project.
The fact that this particular cake had become a global talking point was something I only really began to absorb afterward.
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The Cake I Made for Madonna
I didn’t meet Madonna personally. Her children were the ones who brought the cake out during the celebration.
But for me, the most interesting part of the experience wasn’t celebrity.
It was the process of working with a client and a team who knew exactly what they wanted and cared about every detail.
That is something I value enormously in cake design.
Whether I’m creating a bespoke wedding cake for a couple in Tuscany, a highly sculptural celebration cake, or something completely unexpected, I believe my role is to listen.
I don’t need every cake I make to look like something I would have designed for myself.
My job is to create the cake my client wants me to create—and then bring that vision to life with as much precision, creativity and craftsmanship as possible.
In this case, that meant a giant pink Labubu, a pair of baby-blue eyes, a sugar version of Madonna’s famous cone bra, three layers of carefully built texture, and a very tight three-day deadline.
And somehow, it became the Madonna Labubu cake that everyone was talking about.
I was already back in the laboratory working on the next cake.
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