Homemade Birthday Cake Ideas
Birthdays are so so special. I immensely appreciate the concept of celebrating the day on which you came to this lovely planet. Every culture, every country, and every community has its own unique way of blessing a person on his or her special day. I always like
homemade birthday cakes. Cakes made at home can be customized however you like, can also be sure about the ingredients used. In today's post, I am going to share some of the most popular
homemade birthday cake ideas.
Let There Be Chocolate
Chocolate is BAE. This is my personal favorite in flavors. The very smell of chocolate is enough to lift up one's spirit. If the person for whom you are making the cake has no objections to chocolate, you can safely choose this flavor.
Chocolate cake is extremely yummy in itself and it complements most other flavors. A
chocolate birthday cake can be paired with almost all frostings- buttercream, whipped cream, cream cheese, marshmallow fluff… pretty much anything you can think of. The frosting can be flavored any way you like. Vanilla, chocolate, caramel or fruity flavors like strawberry, raspberry or orange. There is a kid in my neighborhood who loves chocolate and oranges are his favorite fruit. When his mother asked me to make his
birthday cake, I made a
chocolate cake with orange-flavored frosting and he just loved it.
Chocolate Cake With Cherry Filling and Vanilla Buttercream
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| Chocolate Cake with Cherry Filling and Meringue Buttercream |
Ombre
This makes an extremely beautiful color scheme and is super easy to make. Ombre is an extremely
beautiful homemade birthday cake idea. You can pull it off with just one single color and it looks just stunning. There are really so many options when it comes to ombre. All of them look equally good and you can choose one of them based on your expertise, time and available resources. Cakes can be ombre on the inside or outside or both.
How about a
naked ombre cake?
Again, since I cannot get chocolate out of my mind, an ombre scheme can also be pulled off without any color. You can bake your cake layers in ombre using cocoa powder and the frosting can also be prepared similarly.
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| pink-naked-ombre-cake |
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| Chocolate Ombre Cake |
Colour Blast
Colors can create magic. A
birthday cake that has a blast of colors can brighten up any birthday party. There is a very popular trend of having color themes like rainbows or unicorns. A cake in sync with the theme would be so awesome. You can experiment with various color schemes- pastel shades for that little lady entering teenage or a painter's palette shaped marble cake for the painting enthusiast. Your imagination can fly away with its wings for these cakes.
Though it may sound like quite a job, you will be surprised at how easily these can be made. Choose from my soft vanilla or
soft white cake recipes or
soft plain cake recipes and color the batter as you like. Always use gel food color as these do not alter the consistency of your batter or frosting. Nowadays, gel food color manufacturers produce these in neon colors. Consider using these if you want really bright colors.
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| Rainbow-Marble-Cake-for-Birthday |
For my daughter's 5th birthday I made this
unicorn cake using my
soft vanilla cake recipe. For the bottom tier, I made 3 batches, divided it into 6 parts and colored each in a pastel rainbow shade and marbled the batter. For the top tier, I colored each layer in one pastel rainbow shade.
Say It With Flowers
If you want to keep things simple or are pressed for time, flowers can do the magic for you. There is more than one way. Real organic flowers are excellent cake toppers. If you use these you don't really have to worry about how the rest of the cake decoration is. You can opt to keep the cake naked or semi-naked and set the flowers on top and on the sides for multi-layered cakes.
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| Multi-Layered-Flower-Birthday-Cake-Image |
However, finding organic flowers can be challenging. Food safety is of utmost importance. You don't want pesticide residues on flowers. If it is impossible to find such flowers you can make or use ready-made gum paste or fondant flowers. They also look pretty.
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| flower-basket-cake |
I personally like to make cakes that can be eaten completely. So I like to make rosettes on cakes.
I made this
flower basket cake for my brother-in-law's birthday. This was a chocolate cake with whipped vanilla frosting. A wide variety of flowers can be made using frostings. All you need is a little patience and practice.
Gem Of A Cake
Geode cakes are an ongoing popular trend in the caking world. The best part of these is that these are not only stunning to look at but also super easy to make. You can make it with any type of cake flavored any way you like. Once it is filled and frosted, scoop parts of the cake as you like. Frost the naked areas on the cuts and place crystal candies matching the color of the cake.
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| Pink-Goede-Cake |
Cover It Up
This is an extremely
easy way to decorate a cake. Once the cake is filled and frosted you have just got to cover it with any yummy thing that you like. There are a lot of options from which you can choose- chocolates, cookies, candies, sprinkles, sugar balls… and so on. This works very well for
kids' birthday cakes but really you can decorate any birthday cake in this way.
Below I have shared a few images which show a
step-by-step process of decorating a Sugar-Balls-Covered Cake.
Step 1
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| Sugar-Balls-Covered-Cake-Image-1 |
Step 2
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| Sugar-Balls-Covered-Cake-Image-2 |
Step 3
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| Sugar-Balls-Covered-Cake-Image-3 |
Step 4
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| Sugar-Balls-Covered-Cake-Image-4 |
Step 5
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| Sugar-Balls-Covered-Cake-Image-5 |
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| Chocolate Cake Covered With Chocolate Cigars, Chips and Assorted Candies |
Image Credit:
Coldrockchermside from Flickr
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Chocolate-Cake-Decorated-With-Chocolate-Sprinkles
image via Peakpx |
Cartoon Characters
Cartoons are kids' favorites. Whenever I am unsure about what cake to make for a kid's birthday I simply go for the little one's favorite cartoon character. These can be made in several ways like carving the cake into the character's shape, frosting the cake to look like the character's face or by the
buttercream transfer technique.
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| Easy-Doraemon-Cake-Image |
Mickey Mouse Buttercream Transfer Cake (Collected)
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| Lightning Mcqueen Cake |
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| Multi-Layered-Angry-Bird-Cake-Image |
Doll Cake
The first cake that I made for my daughter on her birthday was a doll cake. These cakes not only look beautiful but are also hardly half as difficult to make as they look. I like making them with full figure dolls so that the kid can add the doll to her collection.
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| barbie-doll-cake-for-my-daughter's-birthday |
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Multi-Layered-Elsa-Cake
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| Single-Layered-Elsa-Cake |
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| Beautiful-Single-Layered-Blue-Elsa-Cake |
Checkerboard
A
checkerboard cake is made with layers of
vanilla cakes and
chocolate cakes or with layers in different colors. The layers are cut into concentric shapes and assembled such as to give a checkerboard effect.
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| Classic-Checker-Board-Cake |
Some of the popular checkerboard schemes are Neapolitan and rainbow.
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| One-Slice-of-Classic-Checkerboard-Cake |
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| Neapolitan-Checkerboard-Cake |
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| Rainbow-Checkerboard-Cake |
Pull-Apart Cakes
Pull apart cakes are not only easy to make but also easy to distribute. Yes, all of us who have cut multi-tiered cakes know how difficult these can be to distribute.
Pull apart cakes are the solution for making cakes in practically any shape. The best part of these is that you do not have to be an expert in piping skills. These cakes are made with cupcakes. You just bake them, assemble them in the shape that you want and frost them to your liking.
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| pull-apart-cake |
Whenever you
make a birthday cake it is necessary to remember the preferences and personality of the person for whom you are making the cake. Try making these cakes and share your own
homemade birthday cake ideas with me.
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