As you know if you're a regular follower of my blog, I love cooking with the kids so this guest post from Aupair.org about making funky kids' birthday cakes really appeals to me. I hope you'll find some great inspiration in there too. Happy cooking !
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10 Homemade Kids Cakes They Will Love 
There’s something very special about making a birthday cake for your  child.  They may forget the gifts they received and even the people that  were at the party, but they won’t forget that you made an awesome cake  for their birthday.  Now, you’re probably wondering how you are going to  make an awesome cake for your child.  Well, it’s easier than you may  think.  Check out 10 homemade kids’ cakes they will love. 
Beach cake: This  is one of the easiest cakes you can decorate, but it’s so cute and will  go with a Hawaiian luau party or pool party.  Start by making a  standard 9×13 cake.  Then remove a little white  frosting from the can and color the rest of the container of frosting  blue.  Frost the entire cake with the blue frosting in a pretty thin  layer.  Then add more frosting to look like waves in the bottom two  thirds of the cake.  Touch a little bit of the white frosting to the  waves here and there to look like white caps.  Then press graham cracker  crumbs to the top third of the cake to look like the beach.  Decorate  the cake with paper umbrellas, plastic fish and hula dancers and a nice  big plastic palm tree at the top of the sandy area.  You can use fruit  strips for beach blankets and flower sprinkles to decorate the beach.   Gummy lifesavers look like inner tubes.  Just have fun.
Robot cake: A  very easy and versatile cake.  Start by making a standard 9×13 cake in  any flavor.  Then start cutting it apart into parts for a robot.  Feel  free to sketch this out on paper before you start cutting the cake.   Then once you move to the cake you can even use an edible marker to mark  out the parts and where you want to cut.  Then cut the cake and  assemble the shapes into the robot.  Take a container of store bought  frosting in white and add a little black food coloring to make it gray.   Frost the entire cake in the gray icing.  Then look around at different  candies that you may have at home and try to visualize those candies as  buttons and knobs on a robot.  Place the candy pieces on the cake and  you are done.
Dirt Cake: Such  a fun cake for a kid’s birthday.  Honestly there’s no cake in it.  Mix  together crushed chocolate sandwich cookies, chocolate pudding, cream  cheese, milk and whipped topping and put it all in a new flower pot  lined with plastic wrap.  Top it off with more crushed chocolate cookies  so that it looks like dirt.  Put a plastic flower into it and serve it  with a new trowel and you have the whole illusion complete.  These cakes  work well for lady bug parties, camping parties, frog parties, garden  parties and many others.  The look on your kid’s face will be priceless  when you tell them that you are making them a dirt cake for their party.
Flip Flop cake: Start  by baking a standard 9×13 cake in any flavor.  Then using a template or  free-hand cut out the shape of two flip flops.  Place cakes in the  freezer for about an hour or until firm.  Then color a container of  frosting any color that you’d like and frost both flip flops with the  frosting.  Using fruit by the foot you can create the toe straps for the  flip flops.  Find or buy a couple of plastic flowers and cut off most  of the stem.  Stick the flower right at the top where the two straps  meet.  If you’d like you can decorate the edge of the flip flop with any  hard shelled candy.  If you want to add a little more detail you can  color a little more frosting and put it in a zippered storage bag and  snip off the corn so you can pipe a fine line around the top edge of the  flip flop.
Barrel of Candy cake: I  have seen many variations of this cake, but it is so simple it takes  absolutely no talent at all so this is for all of you that feel like you  can’t make a decent cake to save your life.  Start by making two 8 or 9  inch round cakes.  Put frosting between the layers and then frost the  entire cake with whatever kind of frosting you want.  Chocolate will  work a little better, but it’s really up to you.  Then open up a bunch  of Kit Kat candy bars and stick then to the side of the cake all the way  around the cake.  If you break them into individual sticks you will  have an easier time of making the curve, but either way it will work.   Then fill the top with Runts candy.  Take a ribbon and wrap it around  the outside of the cake and tie a simple bow.
Turtle cupcake cake: Cupcake  cakes are just cupcakes pushed close together to form a shape and then  frosted all together to look like one cake.  You can really let your  imagination run wild and make any shape you want.  But a turtle cake is  very easy.  Make your cupcakes and then push them close together to form  an oval shell.  Frost those with chocolate frosting.  Then color some  white icing green and draw a shell pattern over the top of the chocolate  frosting.  Add additional cupcakes for the head and legs and frost them  with the green frosting.  Using candy you can make the face of the  turtle with a red licorice whip, chocolate chips for nostrils and green  M&M’s for the eyes.
Lego cake: There  are many different ways to make Lego cakes, but this is the easiest  that I have found.  Bake your cake in 3 bread pans.  Using homemade or  store bought cupcakes you need to cut the top off the cupcakes and set  the bottom on top of the other cakes to make it look like a Lego.  Trim  and frost two cakes in two different colors and lay them on a serving  board side by side.  Frost and place the third cake across the other two  cakes so that they look like stacked Legos.  Use two cupcake bottoms on  the top cake and one on each of the lower cakes.  
Monkey cake: A  very simple yet adorable cake, great for a boy or a girl.  Start with a  9” round cake and cut out a small triangle on each side where the  chocolate covered donuts will go for ears.  Frost most of the cake with  chocolate frosting leaving the lower part of the face unfrosted.  Frost  the lower part with pink frosting in the shape of a kidney bean to make  the monkey face.  Use chocolate licorice for hair sticking out of the  top of the head.  Use chocolate sprinkles on the top inch for furry  hair.  Use white icing to make a circle and then add a peppermint patty  to each to make the eyes.  Add a little bit of white icing to make the  reflection in the eyes.  Add a red line for a mouth and two chocolate  M&M’s for the nostrils and you are done!
Doll cake: For  all of those princesses out there this doll cake is just the ticket.   Bake two 9” round cakes and 1 dome cake made using a 2 ½ qt. bowl.   Assemble these together with pink frosting.  Stick the doll pick down in  the center of the cake as you have just made her dress.  Use a piping  bag and more pink frosting to pipe on the bodice of the dress on the  doll.  Then using more frosting or piping gel add finishing bows and  details to the dress.  Voila you are done.
Rainbow Cake: Make  a 9” round cake and cut it in half.  Stack the halves together and  stand them up on their cut side.  This will make your rainbow shape.   Frost the whole cake with white frosting.  Then take M&M’s and start  making lines of color going up and over the rainbow.  If you want to  pipe around the edge of the cake you can and you can fill the small half  circle with blue to make it look like the sky showing through.  Another  nice touch is to put a pot of gold on one end using a cup with some  chocolate coins in it.  Really cute!    
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i must admit I am one of those terrible mums who's children have shop bought birthday cakes, usually one of those favorite characters they have. However since reading this post I like the idea of the Lego cake which is something my son loves to play with - may have to have a test run before his birthday in april.
ReplyDeletethanks for teh great ideas!
I love the Barrel of Candy cake such a simple idea and very effective.
ReplyDeletesome great ideas - i'm lucky my sister is a great baker so does the kids birthday cakes
ReplyDeleteGood ideas, I've never seen a beach cake like that, very cool!
ReplyDeleteMy fave is still the bouncy castle cake my mum once made me with Polly Pockets bouncing on it!
i remember my mum making a 3 bears cake which was simply 3 rectangle cakes decorated as beds with bears in loved it! and no she wasnt a master baker haha
ReplyDeleteSome great ideas there ! :)
ReplyDelete