Your child’s birthday is fast approaching, and you want to bake a very special birthday cake that will make everyone ooh and ah. First you'll need a good recipe so the cake will taste as good as it looks! Start with the recipe below, your own favorite cake recipe, or a mix to make a tasty foundation for your birthday cake masterpiece. Then, use our Buttercream Frosting recipe, food coloring, candy, miniature accessories, and our cake decorating ideas to bring your creative cake vision to life!
Basic Cake & Frosting Recipes
Simple Yellow Cake Recipe
Build the foundation for your culinary masterpiece using our Simple Yellow Cake Recipe, which includes tips for flavoring and tinting your batter…
Buttercream Frosting Recipe
Our creamy Buttercream Frosting Recipe can be tinted any color to fit with your cake theme…
Themed Cake Decorating Ideas
Once you’ve baked your cake, it’s time to come up with ideas for turning it into a certified work of art! To begin, decide on a theme for the cake. If you’ve chosen a shaped cake pan, this part is easy; you just need to follow the decorating directions that came with the pan. These directions typically call for buttercream frosting, food coloring, and a decorating bag with different-sized tips. You can use your own recipe for buttercream frosting or ours (above).
If you've decided to build your own themed cake instead of using a shaped cake pan, you can use a sheet cake or a square or round layer cake as your foundation. With the right decorations, you can turn a simple square, rectangular or round cake into a variety of themed landscapes, animal faces and more. Here are a few ideas to get your creative juices flowing.
Animal Cakes:
Animal Face Cakes – You can turn a round layer cake into the face of any animal (e.g. a bear, cat, dog, cow, etc.) by using 1 or 2 colors of icing appropriate for the animal you’ve chosen (e.g. white and black icing for a cow with spots, pink icing for a pig, dark-brown and tan icing for a dog, and so on). Use the top of a cupcake for the nose, and frost it with the appropriate color. Use M&Ms, Skittles, red licorice string, or other candy of your choice to create eyes, nostrils, a mouth, and other facial features. Split a cupcake in half, and ice each piece to form ears. If you're expecting a large group of guests, why not make several cakes in different designs? Children will love them!
Note: You can use the same principles detailed above to create a clown cake, or a cake that looks like your child’s favorite cartoon character. Snake Cake – Cut a bundt cake into four equal parts. Lay out the four segments in a wavy pattern on your cake plate, and then trim the front edge with a knife to make a triangular head. Trim the other end into a pointed shape to create the snake's tail. Frost the cake with green icing or icing in your child's favorite color. Pipe on stripes in a different color across the back, and use small chocolate candies, such as M&Ms, for the eyes. Cut a strip of fruit leather into a y-shape and set it in front of the head as the snake's tongue. This cake will be sssssssscrumptious!
Puppy Cupcakes - Rename cupcakes as “Pupcakes”, and decorate each with white icing and a paw print. To create the paw print, use one junior mint candy as the paw pad and four brown M&Ms as the toes.
Paw Print Cake - Make a paw print cake by using one round cake as the paw and four small cupcakes around the top half as the toes. When you serve the cake and sing “Happy Birthday”, let your guests bark between each verse (“Happy Birthday to you, WOOF…”).
Sports Cakes:
Use a round layer cake or a domed cake (made by cooking your cake batter in an oven-safe glass bowl) to create a cake in the shape of a sports ball.
- Create a soccer ball cake by icing a round or domed layer cake with white icing and drawing on interconnected pentagons using a tube of black decorator frosting.
- For a basketball cake, frost a round cake with orange frosting, and draw on the ball’s seams with black frosting.
- Make a tennis ball cake using light-green frosting as a foundation and yellow or white icing to form the ball's seams.
- Create a baseball cake by using white icing as a foundation. Then, use red food gel or frosting to draw on the stitching.
- For a football-shaped cake, cut an 8" or 9" round cake in half, trim off a 1"-wide strip from the flat side of each half, and set the strips aside. (You won't use these strips, so feel free to eat them as you work!) Slide the two halves of the cake back together to form a football shape. Frost the cake with chocolate icing, and use white icing to pipe football stitches in a -l-l-l-l- pattern in the center of the cake. You may also wish to write on the name of a popular brand, such as Wilson, for added effect.
- For an extreme sports cake, use a rectangular sheet cake to create a snowboard or motocross park. Create trick ramps using cake squares cut in half diagonally. Ice the ramps with grey or brown frosting and the rest of the cake in the color that fits your theme - white with coconut flakes for snowboards, brown with cookie crumbs for dirt bikes. Purchase miniature bikes, skateboards, snowboards, or action figures to place on the ramps and around the perimeter of the cake.
Nature Scene Cakes:
Create the foundation for a nature scene using a rectangular sheet cake iced with green frosting to represent grass, blue frosting to represent water, or blue and yellow frosting to represent the beach. Then, decorate the cake using one of these scene-specific ideas:
- Ocean Cake – Create an ocean scene on a blue-iced cake by using decorations like gummy fish, wisps of seaweed drawn with green food gel or icing, and an octopus made by surrounding a red gumball body with 8 red licorice string tentacles.
- Forest Cake – Create a woodland scene on a green-frosted cake using miniature fawns and other plastic forest creatures, miniature trees (Lego and aquarium trees work well), and either sugar flowers or flowers drawn with tubes of red, yellow, pink, and green decorator frosting.
- Beach Cake – Turn your cake into a seaside delight by icing half of the cake with blue icing and half with yellow icing. Draw a rippled edge between the two halves to create a wavy shoreline. Crush graham crackers, and sprinkle them over the yellow frosting to give the appearance of sand; or, use decorative yellow sugar. Set a miniature toy boat on the ocean side of the cake, and use different colors of food gel or decorator icing to draw seashells and tiny crabs on the shore side. Use drink umbrellas to add the finishing touches.
- Flower Cake – Surround a round cake with cupcakes or Twinkies to create a flower. Ice the center with yellow frosting and the cupcake/Twinkie petals with pink or lavender frosting.
- Wild West Cake - A 9”x13” cake decorated with white icing can become a horse corral. Create a fence by pressing pretzel twists upside down into the cake all around the top edge. Then scatter green sugar across the top to resemble grass, and add some shredded wheat cereal in one corner as hay bales. Next add crushed graham crackers as dirt, and set plastic trees, cowboy and horse figures inside the corral. Place some of the horses in a diagonal line so it looks like they're running from one corner to the other.
- Flower Garden Cake – Bake a round, square or rectangular cake. Frost the cake with white icing, and sprinkle it liberally with coconut that has been tossed with a few drops of green food coloring to make it resemble grass. Or, if you prefer, just frost the cake with light green icing and skip the coconut. Unwrap miniature, solid milk chocolate bars, and press them into the cake along its perimeter to form the garden's fence. Alternatively, you can create a white picket fence using white chocolate-coated pretzel twists pressed, upside-down, into the cake. Unwrap a handful of lollipops, and press the sticks into the cake to form a flower garden. No matter what your party theme, this cake is always a hit!
- Ladybug or Bug Cake – Use a dome-shaped cake baked in an oven-safe glass bowl to create the body of the bug and a cupcake top as the head. Frost the head with black icing and the body with red for a ladybug, stripes of yellow and black for a bee, or green for a more general bug design. Create spots or other designs on your bug cake by adding gumdrops, mini Junior Mints, or round wafer candies. Trim a straw to make two antennae, and top each with a gumdrop; press the bottoms of the straws into the cupcake head. Use Skittles or cut a gumdrop in half to create two eyes, and pipe on red icing for a smile.
- Volcano Bundt Cake - Place a bundt cake on top of a 9” square cake. Next, completely cover both of the cakes with chocolate frosting, and then slowly pour orange frosting around the top to resemble lava flowing out of a volcano. Orange frosting can be made by adding red and yellow food coloring to a can of white frosting.
- Volcano Chocolate Cake – This impressive cake can be made with three or four round cake layers. Frost between the layers and stack them, and then use a knife to cut the stack into a cone-shaped volcano. Frost the cake with chocolate frosting, and sprinkle with crushed chocolate cookies as dirt, and broken red lollipop pieces as lava. Chill the cake for one hour. Then pour strawberry ice cream shell topping down the sides of the cake to resemble flowing lava. The topping will harden when it makes contact with the cold icing.
Car and Truck Cakes:
Car and Truck Cakes - Use a loaf cake such as a pound cake. Cut a wedge out of one end of the cake to resemble a windshield and hood area. Begin the cut about three inches from one end, cutting from the top down about an inch, and slicing back to the front edge. Frost the cake in any color, and use small doughnuts or round cookies pressed against the sides as wheels. With a different color frosting, pipe on the shape of windows and other details.
Racetrack Cake - Decorate a rectangular sheet cake to look like a racetrack or roadway. First, ice the whole cake with green frosting. Then, use a tube of black decorator frosting or chocolate sprinkles to draw an oval racetrack or a meandering road on the cake. Set a few miniature toy cars or trucks on the racetrack/road. You can also add plastic trees, miniature flags on toothpicks, and/or miniature signs to put the finishing touches on your cake.
Construction Work Site Cake - Bake a 9x13" cake, and frost it with green icing. Use a tube of black gel frosting or chocolate sprinkles to draw a road around the cake. Then add a pile of crushed graham crackers as "dirt" in the middle of the cake, and place small toy trucks on the "dirt pile". Add brown candy such as malt balls, junior mints, or peanut M&Ms for rocks!
More Fun Cake Ideas:
Castle Cake – Bake two 8" or 9" square cakes, and stack them with frosting between the two layers. Frost the entire cake pale yellow or pink for a princess' castle, or brown or gray for a knight's castle. Frost four ice cream cones to match the cake, and set them upside down by the four corners of the cake to create turrets. Stick minature flags on toothpicks into the ice cream cones. If your child has tiny princess or knight figures, stand them around the castle for added decoration.
Wizard Hat Cupcakes – For a fun and easy magic party treat, make wizard hat cupcakes instead of cake! Frost each cupcake with white icing, and then roll just the outer edges in black sugar. Set a chocolate ice cream cone upside down on top of each cupcake. (Note: Oreo brand cones are perfect!) With a tube of yellow decorator frosting, pipe a lightning bolt or a few star shapes onto each cone, and then you're done!
Pizza Cake – Turn your cake into a pizza pie by icing a round cake with red frosting, sprinkling some grated almond paste or coconut overtop to represent cheese, adding a thin roll of almond paste or light yellow icing around the perimeter to form the crust. Then add your toppings - red fruit leather cut into circles can represent pepperoni, junior mints for olives, and slices of marshmellows with the middles cut out can represent onions. For added effect, use a knife to make four shallow cuts across the cake that intersect in the middle, forming 8 pizza slices.
Circus Cupcakes – Use any flavor cupcake with white frosting. Decorate the top to look like a clown face using a red gumball for the nose, two pieces of star-shaped cereal for the eyes, a snip of red licorice string for a mouth, and a few puffs of cotton candy as the hair. If you like, add an ice cream cone upside down to become the clown hat.
Magic Cake – Create a magician’s top hat using a rectangular sheet cake. After the cake is baked, trim off a long strip from one side. Set the two pieces together to form a brimmed hat. If necessary, trim a bit of the brim off so that it extends just a few inches past the left- and right-sides of the hat’s top. Ice the cake black, and then draw on a white frosting band a few inches above the hat’s brim. For added effect, you can add black sprinkles to make the cake shimmer a little bit.
Dinosaur Nesting Grounds Cake - Use a 9”x13” cake, and cover it with chocolate frosting. Next, scatter crushed chocolate cookies over the top as dirt. Then place small toy dinosaurs and plastic trees on top of the cake to create the dinosaur scene. Build a round nest in one area with more crushed cookies, and place jelly beans inside the nest as the eggs. Add another toy dinosaur nearby as the mother guarding her nest!
Hatching Egg Cake – Start with two round layer cakes, and stack the layers with frosting in the middle. Then use a knife to cut it in half using a zigzag pattern, to resemble an egg cracking open. Pull the two sides slightly apart, and frost the cake with white icing. Place a toy animal on the cake plate in the middle of the crack, as if it were hatching!
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