I've been wanting to make geode cupcakes for a while now, and I finally had the perfect opportunity. My friend's son turned eight last week, and he absolutely loves geology. Geode cupcakes were the perfect treat to make for him!

Geode cupcake topper tutorial image collage optimized for pinterest.

These geode cupcake toppers are entirely edible, made out of gum paste and rock crystal sugar.

Three cupcakes with edible gum paste and sugar crystal geode cupcake toppers on a galvanized metal cake stand.

Rock candy sugar is always a hit with kids (SUGAR! PURE SUGAR!) and the kids loved saying, "Look mom, I'm eating a rock!"

Line of cupcakes with edible gum paste and sugar crystal geode cupcake toppers on a white marble surface.

These rock crystal geode cupcake toppers aren't hard to make, but they do require some drying time, so you need to plan at least a day ahead.

Gel food coloring, marbled grey gum paste, nests of cling wrap, and three edible geode cupcake toppers drying on a white marble surface.

Geode Cupcake Toppers:

gum paste (I like Satin Ice brand best)
clear rock crystal candy
black food coloring
food coloring for whatever color you want the geode crystals to be (I used electric purple, electric blue, and electric pink)
Everclear or vodka
clear piping gel (optional)
cling wrap

Marbled grey gum paste being shaped into edible geode cupcake toppers.

The first step is to form the outer rock shell of the geode. I mixed some super black Americolor gel food coloring in to my white gum paste, but didn't knead it in quite all the way, so there were variations and different grey tones in the gum paste. You can see how I knead and color my gum paste in the video tutorial at the bottom of this post.

Make a little nest out of cling wrap. Press a portion of the gum paste into a rough circle, and press the center of the circle into the center of the cling wrap nest.

Clear sugar crystals being added to the inside of the gum paste geode cupcake topper

Next, it's time to add the crystals growing in the center of the geode. I'd planned to use clear piping gel to get the crystals to stick, because it would grip the crystals well and help them hol don to the sides of the gum paste geode shell. But I can't find where I put my clear piping gel, so I just used everclear as my glue.

Everclear dries very quickly, but it activates the sugar in both the sugar crystals and the gum paste, and when it dries, glues it all together. It was definitely more of a challenge getting the crystals to stick where I wanted them to using everclear as my glue, but it definitely worked.

Clear sugar crystal and gum paste geode cupcake toppers being painted with pink, purple, and blue food coloring.

Let the geodes with clear crystals dry completely before painting the crystals, so you don't knock the crystals off the sides as you're adding color.

Three purple and blue rock candy edible geode cupcake toppers drying in cling wrap nests on a white marble background.

The color is painted on by making a watercolor type of paint with more everclear alcohol and food coloring. The everclear evaporates quickly, leaving behind just beautiful, translucent, colored sugar crystals.

line of four cupcake topped with edible gum paste and sugar crystal geode cupcake toppers on a white background.

I iced the cupcakes with some chocolate frosting, added some brown sugar for dirt and some chocolate rocks, and crowned the whole thing with one of the edible geode cupcake toppers.

Cupcake topped with brown sugar dirt, chocolate rocks, and a gum paste and rock candy edible geode cupcake topper.

I discovered pretty quickly that I needed to put the geode topper on before I added the brown sugar dirt, or the geode didn't want to stick. So learn from my error, and put on the icing, geode topper, then pat the brown sugar on the exposed icing around the geode.

Cupcake topped with brown sugar dirt, chocolate rocks, and a gum paste and sugar crystal edible geode cupcake topper.