Category: Cool Cakes

• This fun cake evokes happy childhood memories of enjoying an ice cream in a cone
• The drips down the side of the cake are really effective on a higher profile base, but you could use a lower, traditional cake shape as the base if you needed to. 
• The sprinkles add a lovely splash of colour and texture to the cake and offer a few colours that could be matched with the icing. It would be fun to pick out the yellow colour in the sprinkles in the icing or somewhere else in the cake. 
• The pastel shades of this cake are quite feminine, but you could experiment with chocolate and white icing or a blue and white colour scheme, for example, for a bloke. 

Whilst cakes with fancy icing and decorations are things or beauty to marveled at, sometimes it’s the simplest cakes that have the biggest impact, like this gorgeous Berry Butter Cake…

Why we love it:

• Assorted berries look fresh and colourful as a simple decoration on this cake. 
• This is a great summer cake as it’s light and uses seasonal fruit which will hopefully taste its best at this time of year. 
• Butter cake is a real crowd-pleaser, but if you are catering for people with allergies you could substitute butter with Nuttelex or another dairy-free substitute, or use gluten-free flour. 
• It’s quick to put together – you don’t have to put too much thought into decorations as the berries as piled on top and secured in place with a layer of icing. 

Why we love it:

• It’s simple, but really effective. From the outside, this cake looks quite unassuming with it’s pristine white icing. The surprise lies on the inside, waiting for the cake to be cut…
• There are a couple of ways you could achieve this tonal effect. You could opt for slightly different coloured food dyes, or play with the amount of food dye you include in each layer of sponge for a light-dark effect. 
• You could play with the way the layers are stacked for a different effect, e.g. light-dark-light-dark or a gradient effect going from light to dark. 
• This cake looks very feminine, but you could experiment with different colours, such as blues, greens, reds, etc for a man. 
• The white icing on this cake works well with the pink coloured sponge, but you could use any coloured icing too – to match the colour of the sponge, or chocolate could be good too…

When I was a kid, mum would make my birthday cake in the shape of the age I turned each year. This was a great idea, as every year my cake was very different and when I look back at photos of me with the cake I know exactly which birthday it was. She would then decorate the cake in a colour or theme that I was into that year (a little like the Peppa Pig cake I made for my daughter here). Using a number as the base for a birthday cake is a great idea for kids, as they are usually so proud when they turn another year older. I’m not so sure this would be the case once you turn 30 though…I don’t think I would want everyone to know my age now;-)

• A number-shaped base makes an interesting cake, so you can make the icing and other decorations as simple or as fancy as you like. 
• This concept works well for male or female birthdays, and especially well for kids who are excited when they turn another year older (they’ll soon get over that;-)
• If you don’t want to buy all the numbers, some cake stores will let you hire cake tins. 

Like many three-year-olds, Little Miss Gift is obsessed with Peppa Pig. She would spend hours absorbed watching it on TV, if I let her. So it was no surprise when we were planning her third birthday afternoon tea that Peppa Pig was her theme of choice. 

I wasn’t sure how I was going to create a birthday cake in the shape of Peppa Pig. So I opted for a simple round-shaped birthday cake (two slabs of cake, sandwiched with butter cream icing to keep it moist) and focused on decorating it with a Peppa theme. 

I have never done cake decorating, so wasn’t confident I could make sugar Peppa Pig figurines, but then I had the idea of incorporating some of the Birthday Girl’s presents into the cake. I had bought some plastic Peppa Pig figurines that I thought would be fun to pop on the cake. When the cake ceremony was done she would have some new little friends to play with. 

This idea worked a treat and Little Miss Gift was thrilled. 

Other cake components included:

• White fondant icing (left over from my son’s birthday cake, but rolled dangerously thin – I don’t think you can get two cakes out of one pack of icing!) covering a Funfetti-flavoured cake.
• Pink marshmellows cut in half and dipped in Hundred and Thousands sprinkles
• Birthday candles purchased from local discount store 
• White and silver organza “Happy Birthday” ribbon around the base of the cake (to cover where the fondant finishes) and add to the birthday theme. And yes, this is the same ribbon I used on my son’s cake;-)

This cake looks so realistic I’m not sure if I’d actually like to eat it! However, this would be a pretty cool cake for a car enthusiast. The level of detail alone in the tyre tread is super impressive, which is why this one made it onto our cake of the week list…

Why we love it:

• You’ve got to appreciate the level of detail and craftmanship here
• This would get a tick of approval from car enthusiasts

Check out more cake ideas here…

Little Master Gift was born on ANZAC Day last year. This year, his 1st birthday coincided with the ANZAC centenary, so we wanted his cake to commemorate this very special occasion. I thought an Australiana-themed cake would be appropriate, and thoroughly enjoyed myself creating the below result…

• The cake itself was a chocolate cake. I covered it with plain white fondant icing (after covering the cake with a basic butter cream which gives the fondant icing something to stick to). 
• Red poppies (for ANZAC Day) were sourced from the Australia War Memorial and gum leaves from the park. The candles were purchased from a local cake shop and I picked up the flags in a local discount store. 
• The cake is wrapped with red ribbon and white/silver organza ‘Happy Birthday’ ribbon. This helps to hide the base of the cake, as I didn’t trim the fondant icing as neatly as I would have liked! 

Check out more cake ideas here…