These 12 cute little characters are so simple to make, by adults or children - you can make them purely for fun and place them on an iced board, or use them to decorate a cake for someone you love. Make your cake toppers weeks or months in advance, ready to decorate a Christmas or birthday cake - just remember not to store them anywhere damp! Because no moulds or cutters are used, each little character you create will have its own personality and no two will be identical. You can use any modelling medium, not just sugarpaste. For example, salt dough is best for larger models and coloured modelling clay for tiny ones. Handy templates make it easy to judge the sizes of the various body parts of your cake toppers. The possibilities are endless.

Ann Pickard qualified as a Baker and Cake Decorator in 1983 and opened her own shop, The Icing Centre, in 1986. She runs a successful cake-decorating business in Weston-super-Mare in Somerset, UK, and has published seven books on cake decorating called The Idiot's Guides, which have sold in excess of 45,000 copies in the last 16 years. She has also produced a range of DVDs on the same subject, as well as the recently published book Cake Characters.