Frequently Asked Questions (and answers…)

Ordering your edible photo topper

You can pay securely online by credit card or debit card from Visa, MasterCard or American Express (Amex). We also accept Apple Pay if you’re all funky and down with that stuff.

All orders received before 5pm Monday to Friday will be processed, printed and dispatched the next working day.

Orders received after 5pm Monday to Friday, after the office has closed, will be treated as an order received on the following working day. For example if you order at 9pm on a Monday night, this will be treated as an order placed on Tuesday and therefore processed, printed and despatched on the Wednesday.

Any orders placed over the weekend whilst we can’t guarantee, we can normally process, print and dispatch these on the next working day, being the Monday unless there is a Bank Holiday.

A working day is defined as Monday to Friday excluding Bank Holidays. Our office hours are 9am to 5pm Monday to Friday. We cannot be held responsible for orders placed outside of our working hours and not arriving in time for your cake or event. Please give yourself plenty of time for your order to arrive.

Please note: Royal Mail do not guarantee First Class delivery for the next day, they only aim to deliver the next day. Generally First Class post arrives within 1 to 3 working days, but has been known to take up to 5 during busy periods.

There are a number of ways you can get your photos to us. You can upload your photo(s) in our edible photo designer when placing your order. Preferably photos should be no larger than 4MB (Megabytes). You can also use our designer to bring in photos from your Facebook or Instagram account if you would prefer.

If you choose for us to design your topper for you, you will have the option to upload your photo as part of the order process. Preferably photos should be no larger than 4MB (Megabytes). If your files are larger than 4MB then please tick the option “email us your photo(s) later” in the shopping basket and then email to [email protected] along with your Transaction ID (which you will find on your order confirmation email). Please zip up multiple photos in to one file.

If you are sending your photo by post for us to scan, please ensure you tick the box in the shopping basket and you have added ‘Have us scan your photo’ to your shopping basket, this costs an additional £1.00. You can then send us your photo, along with your Transaction ID (which you will find on your order confirmation email), to:

Photo On A Cake
2 Summerhill Green
Suffolk
IP16 4WY

We will return your photo in the envelope with your printed cake topper. Please allow 1 week for this option.

Once you have placed your order, you will receive and order confirmation email, please review the details CAREFULLY and notify us within one hour of your order of any mistakes you have made regarding the size, style, spelling or any other aspect of your topper.

We will always do our best to help and accommodate any changes, however, unless notified otherwise, orders (photo, text etc.) will be printed EXACTLY as sent to us. We cannot be held liable for any mistakes made unless notified within one hour of your order being placed.

If you would like to cancel your order, please send us an email by using our contact form. If you request us to cancel your order, you will be subject to a £1.00 cancellation fee in order to cover our administration costs.

If you have used an existing PayPal account to make payment, please check the account email you used for this payment. Alternatively, if you are using Hotmail, Outlook, Gmail or other web-based email, please check your JUNK mail folder.

Any emails from Photo On A Cake will come from: [email protected] or [email protected]

You can read more about checking your spam and junk email folders here.

Our postage charges are based on weight, so normally we charge £1.95 for Royal Mail First Class postage and packaging, for orders with one or two toppers. Above that, for more than three toppers in an order, or if you add candles, postage increases a little bit, but you’ll see in your cart / at the checkout what your postage costs are going to be.

Please note: Royal Mail do not guarantee First Class delivery for the next day, they only aim to deliver the next day. Generally First Class post arrives within 1 to 3 working days, but has been known to take up to 5 during busy periods.

Please ensure you order in a timely way and give yourself plenty of time for your order to arrive.

Posting times are normally affected from early December each year due to the Christmas postage volumes. As such, even though we post our toppers First Class Royal mail, some toppers can take up to five working days to arrive. We suggest you bear this in mind when ordering in December and place your order in plenty of time to allow it to arrive. We cannot be responsible for delays at Royal Mail if your topper isn’t ordered in good time.

If your question is not answered within this FAQs section, please send us an email by using our contact form below.

How to use your topper

Yes. If you are going to cut your photo cake topper, we recommend using a sharp craft knife. You can also put a number of photos on to one sheet and cut those out as well.

Please note: black or dark coloured backgrounds will soften the icing greatly and should be avoided where possible.

Our toppers are easy peel toppers! You simply need to gently pull the backing sheet away from the topper.

Your icing sheet will keep very well within the sealed plastic bag provided, however, we recommend you utilise the sheet within three months of receipt. This will ensure that the sheet is in the best condition for your cake(s).

Cake toppers should be stored in their plastic sleeve, sealed, in a cool, dark cupboard or area out of direct sunlight. At all times, moisture should be kept away from the topper(s). They should never be stored in a fridge, even after being applied to your cake(s). Moisture will cause the photo topper to “melt”, causing the colours to run.

Cakes decorated with toppers should not be stored in tupperware / plastic / sealed tins as this causes the cakes to ‘sweat’. Preferably, decorated cakes should be stored in a cool room, in a cardboard box (or other breathable material).

If you are not going to consume your decorated cakes within 24 hours of applying the topper(s), you may want to consider, particularly if using a buttercream icing, placing a fondant / sugarpaste (regal ice) layer between the buttercream and the topper. This will protect the topper from natural moisture in the buttercream. Additionally the cakes should not be stored in a fridge.

If you’ve pulled to hard on the topper and it is slightly torn, place it on your cake/cupcake and then gently smooth the two torn edges together. The heat from your hands should gently bind the edges together! Please remember to be gentle it is after all only a very thin sheet of icing!

Information about your photograph(s)

Please be advised that we will not accept or print any photographs that contain nudity, illegal activity or extreme language.

Should we receive an order containing any of the above we reserve the right to cancel your order and refund you in full without prior notice.

We are also unable to print pictures of money / bank notes. It’s actually against the law to reproduce bank notes, even if it’s just for fun and edible like our toppers. Our software will actually not allow us to print them. Sorry about this – don’t shoot the messenger!

Yes. When laying out your own topper with our easy-to-use website you can select multiple images to add to your topper. This is particularly good on our large rectangle icing sheets and on cupcake toppers. We’ve even made a little video to help so you how to do this in our how to videos section.

Alternatively, if you are having us design your topper for you, we can do a montage using multiple images. This costs an additional £3.00. This also applies if we are laying out your cupcake topper and you require different images for each.

Black & White photos will print with a slight green tinge, this is due to the fact that the icing sheets are cream, not pure white, and the density of the black on the cream gives the overall effect of a green hue, if you send us a black & white photo we will print them, but we cannot be accountable for the hue.

Although we try to print right up to the edge, there is a small border around all photos on icing sheets. This varies depending on the shape and size of the sheet but we will print as close to the edge as our software will allow. You can cut any unprinted icing off with a sharp craft knife.

When you’re ordering your cake topper, you should ensure that your photo is a good size and shape for that topper. Although you can enlarge photos, they can only enlarge so much before they lose quality and definition. For example, a 4cm photo wouldn’t enlarge very well to a 19.1cm large rectangle cake topper. For the best results, you should try and send the largest image you can.

Generally, photos taken with a digital camera of at least 3 megapixels or larger are a good size. Photos from older mobile phones, or those with low quality cameras often do not print well.

If you’re scanning your own photograph, if should be scanned at 300dpi or larger as a JPEG.

If you’re taking an image off of the internet to us, Google has an option on image search to only look for ‘Large’ images, this can be found by selecting ‘Search tools’ in your image search results and then under ‘Size’ selecting ‘Large’.

Here are some guidelines to follow for image sizes, you can see the size of your image by right-clicking it and selecting ‘Properties’. These are minimums, bigger is better.

Topper type Size of topper (in centimetres) Guideline minimum image size (KB / Kilobytes) Guideline minimum image size (pixels)
Large Rectangle 25.2 (wide) x 19.1 (high) 500 KB 1,500 (wide) x 1,100 (high)
Small Rectangle 19.1 (wide) x 11.4 (high) 350 KB 1,250 (wide) x 750 (high)
Square 19.1 (wide) x 19.1 (high) 400 KB 1,250 (wide) x 1,250 (high)
Round 19.1 400 KB 1,250 (wide) x 1,250 (high)
Cupcake 5.4 200 KB 600 (wide) x 600 (high)

It is your responsibility to provide the highest quality image you can. If you use an image smaller than these recommended sizes we will print it as best we can.

Please note: black or dark coloured backgrounds will soften the icing greatly and should be avoided where possible.

Whilst the photo on icing will be a very good representation of the original picture, please bear in mind it is an icing sheet and does have its own slightly textured surface. Additionally, the quality of the print on the icing will depend on the size of the photo you send us. If the photo (or emailed file) is small it will distort slightly when stretched beyond its original resolution giving a ‘grainy’ finish to the icing sheet. If in the very unlikely event your photo is not suitable we will let you know.

Please do not expect Pantone colour matching as this is not possible with edible ink colours.
Please note: black or dark coloured backgrounds will soften the icing greatly and should be avoided where possible. Additionally, Black & White photos will print with a slight green tinge, this is due to the fact that the icing sheets are cream, not pure white, and the density of the black on the cream gives the overall effect of a green hue, if you send us a black & white photo we will print them, but we cannot be accountable for the hue.

All other questions

No we don’t, but we have provided some options for ordering undecorated cakes and cupcakes, along with some shortcuts on how to create your own cakes, on our Cakes & Mixes page. Alternatively please either look for a local baker in your area.

You can view our video on how you design and order your topper here.

We have a range of great fonts that you can choose from either in the designer when you create your own topper or if you ask us to build your topper for you.

We’ve included standard computer fonts like Arial, Impact etc. and a range of Google Fonts and others which you can see in the list below:

An image showing all of the fonts available on Photo On A Cake.

A list of all of the available fonts. Akadora, Akronim, Bariol, Borg, Courgette, Creepster, Felipa, Graduate, Harlow, Indie Flower, Lobster, Nairobi, Pacifico, Passion One, Patterns & Dots, Permanent Marker, Pieces of Eight, Pirate One, Seaside, Sego Script, Short Stack, Sketchblock, Snap, Wendy One and Waltograph.

If you’re using our designer tool to make your own topper, you can use whatever colours you want.

If you choose for us to build your topper for you, then you’ll need to tell us the colour to use when you place your order from the list below:

Image showing the colours of fonts available on Photo On A Cake

The different colours available for text on Photo On A Cake. Black, Dark Blue, Light Blue, Green, Pink, Purple, Rainbow, Red, Yellow and White.

Sugar, starches (E1422, E1412), maltodextrin, glycerol E422, water, stabilizer (E414, E 415, E460i), dextrose, emulsifiers (E435, E491, E471), food color (E171), citric acid E330, artificial flavours, preservative (E202)

All our products are are free from and suitable for the following:

  • Gluten
  • Lactose
  • Nuts
  • Eggs
  • Vegetarian / Vegan
  • Kosher

Still need help? Then drop us a line…

Before getting in touch, please make sure you’ve checked our FAQs and watched our how to videos as 90% of customer questions can be answered there.

If you still need help, please complete the form below to send us an email. Our working hours are 10am to 3pm Monday to Friday. We aim to respond to emails within 24 hours during the week. If we receive your email on a weekend or bank holiday, we will aim to respond the next working day.

Please note that Photo On A Cake is an internet based business and we can only offer support by email.

FORM