Easy Novelty Birthday Cakes

Becles

My son had a birthday party last weekend and I got loads of compliments on his cake. I made a 3ft light sabre! I thought a thread about easy birthday cakes would be useful to save in the index, so please add your ideas to it.

Light Sabre

I cheated and bought 3 jumbo swiss rolls cakes. I put them end to end on a plank of wood covered in tin foil.

Cut one end to a slight taper.

Cover the bottom ¼ of the cakes in black roll out icing.

Cover the rest in roll out icing depending on who's lightsabre it is:
blue - Anakin and Luke Skywalker, Obi One Kenobi
red - Darth Vadar, Darth Sidius, Darth Maul
green - Yoda, Luke Skywalker (in episode 6!)
purple - Mace Windu

Pipe on a small control panel and stick on smarties for buttons.


Football Pitch

Cover a rectangular sponge cake in butter icing. Stick chocolate fingers round the sides to make a fence.

Put some coconut in a tupperware box with a few drops of green colouring and shake hard. Cover the top of the cake with the green coconut.

Pipe on pitch markings with white icing.

Make goals with bamboo skewars bent into shape, and corner flags with pieces of skewar or coctail sticks, with gummed paper flags on.


Tardis

Bake a cake in a loaf tin.

Stand on end and cover in blue roll out icing.

Pipe on features and add a blue gobstopper type sweet on the top for the light.

comping_cat

I made DD a chocolate cake, covered it in chocolate icing, then piled it with sweets (smarties, flumps, sweet necklaces, haribo etc)!!! It looked lovely and all the children loved it!!!
Also, baked a cake in a sponge bowl, put popped popcorn around the bottom and then covered all of it in melted chocolate. Then put a Barbie doll in a swimsuit on top, and covered her legs in rolled out icing to make it look like a mermaids fins, sprinkle the popcorn covered chocolate with brown sugar (whilst chocolate is still wet) and it looks lovely!!!

Ronankfan

i made a hedgehog cake - bake a sponmge in a pudding basin then cover in chocolate butter icing and the cover in chocolate flakes to make the spines and add marzipan feet and eyes. My son loved it!!!

thriftlady_2

I needed a light sabre cake last Tuesday!!!
My 9 yo son had to settle for a chocolate smartie-covered cake instead as I thought a light sabre was too difficult.If only you'd posted last weekend !

Great way of doing it though,and the Star Wars phase seems to last a while so maybe next year or for ds1's 11 th b'day in the summer.

Frugal_Fox

Fairy Mushroom

Bake 2 sponges in pudding bowls
Place one on board and decorate in butter icing / frosting
Place remaining cake on top and again decorate in butter icing / frosting
Decorate with love hearts, silver balls on top of mushroom.
Also made a door, grass and climbing flowers out of 'green laces' and jelly tots.

My 8 year old loved it! Also bought marshmallow mushrooms to go on board too.

Crocodile / Dinosaur

Bake two loaf cakes (maderia seems best)Lay both end on board to make long rectangle, taper one end for mouth - use off cuts to make tail.
Cover in greeny/brown icing and paint on 'skin'.
Scarily added sweet sticks as teeth, cherries for eyes and nasty orange coloured marzipan for tongue.

For dinosaur - very similar, but build up body more, add chocolate spines and mini rolls for legs!

Cat

Standard round sponge - shape out two ears at top
Cover in butter icing
decorate with sweets for eyes, nose and whiskers

Merry go round

Two round sponge cakes.
Set first on board.
Insert cardboard tube into middle (We iced and covered in 'laces')
Insert plastic cake supports/skewers into base cake (we twisted ribbon round)
Place muffin on top of second sponge, decorate and place on cardboard base. Cut to fit, then balance on skewers and cardboard tube.
We added Playmobil horses where the skewers were

AND were able to transport it gingerly by car to Pizza Hut!

Fairy Castle

Various shapes of cake on base. Cover in ready rolled white icing.
Add tower or two - out of swiss roll, again covered in ready roll icing, and add turret top - we used rice paper.
Add various sugar decorations - flowers, silver balls sweets etc
Used marshmallows for steps up to castle door

One more thing!
I use the gel icing colours that come in little tubs - can get from internet, or good cake shops (ie wedding cake shops). You can mix to get greater colours, and seem to last for ages. A little more pricey, but well worth it.
Only thing is I'm now a little worried that for my sons next birthday he wants a crocodile standing on its head - ala Roald Dahls 'Enormous Crocodile' Great :eek: Least I have until October to work it out - or persuade him to have a light saber cake!!!

Also check out library for cake decorating books for loads more ideas! Good one to recommend is 'Australian Womens Weekly' Kids Cakes

honey28

Does anybody have pictures of any of these cakes - they all sound fantastic and not at all "easy"! I don't think I would be capable although I would love to try the barbie for my DD Birthday in May. Maybe I should start practicing LOL :rotfl:
how easy is it to add the rolled icing? I also imagined it to be difficult and fiddly to work with

thriftlady_2

This is what I'm going to try for my dd's b'day next month(she'll be 6).I saw it in a book called Eat Up.

It is a sort of mountain made out of chocolate krispie cakes stuck together.The picture looked fab,it had white choc and ordinary choc krispies and was stuck all over with sparklers.

The idea was that the b'day child could break off the cakes and distribute them to the guests.I like it because it doesn't involve eggs(dd allergic).

Becles

honey28 wrote:

how easy is it to add the rolled icing? I also imagined it to be difficult and fiddly to work with

No - it's dead easy. If you can manage pastry, you can manage roll out icing!

Just roll it out slightly bigger than the cake, put it over the cake and smooth out then trim the excess off with a sharp knife.

Here's the light sabre:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v196/becles/DSC00998.jpg

and the football pitch:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v196/becles/birthday001.jpg

honey28

They look fantastic - very professional! My DS would love the footie!

jopsey

any suggestions for DS 1st birthday bearing in mind i am a total novice

Alleycat

jopsey wrote:

any suggestions for DS 1st birthday bearing in mind i am a total novice

You could do a lily pad with a round sponge tin, cutting a small wedge in the side to create the bit where it goes in and decorate with frogs? In Morrisons and Tescos they sell little icing figures of various animals, frogs included.

Or for my dd's 1st birthday, I did a chocolate sponge decorated with chocolate icing (yum!), you can buy this ready made in a tub. I then decorated it using the multicoloured tubes of icing with flowers and insects. I used smarties for petals and to decorate butterflies and bumble bees (filling in any gaps with the icing).

We unfortunately didn't get a good photo of it before it was brought out, but I will check the photos of the day and see if there is a good one I can post.

birthday cake