Children's Birthday Cake Ideas

The first place to go when getting children’s birthday cake ideas is your child. Ask your child what kind of cake he wants. He may want a specific theme for his entire birthday party that you can relate to the birthday cake. Or your child may want a Blue’s Clues theme for his birthday, but want a dinosaur cake.

See more pictures of kid cakes!

Children's Birthday Cake Ideas Online

If your child has no birthday cake ideas, a great place to start is the Internet. The following sites are just ideas; a Google search for children’s birthday cake ideas will provide you with many more resources:

• Birthday Express is a fun site. This site is paired with Pillsbury and includes fun cakes such as castles, unicorns, jet fighters, and treasure chests.
• FamilyFun.com is another great site. This site not only has great birthday cakes like pirate ships and tigers, but fun seasonal cakes, too.
• Kids Domain.com has fun, easy, and economical birthday cake ideas. Examples include Toy Story, dinosaurs, and fire engines.

Before you agree to a cake that your child wants, check the ingredients and instructions. Make sure that the ingredients fall within your budget and that you have enough baking expertise to follow the instructions.

Children's Birthday Cake Ideas Locally

homemade penguin cake

You can get great children’s birthday cake ideas from your local grocery store or bakery. Most stores have booklets with pictures that your child can look through. The pictures may inspire you and your child to come up with a great cake idea or they may motivate you to buy a pre-made cake rather than bake one yourself.

Creating a Themed Birthday Cake

It might be fun for you and your child to create your own original birthday cake idea.

Choosing a Flavor

The first thing you have to do is choose the flavor of the cake. If possible, you can try to match this up with the theme. For example, a strawberry cake would be appropriate for a Strawberry Shortcake themed cake. For a bug theme, you might choose a chocolate cake with chocolate frosting to represent dirt.

Choosing a Shape

toy blocks birthday cake

The next step is to decide on the shape of the cake. Do you want it circular and multi-tiered with a layer of frosting between tiers? A multi-tiered cake might be great for a princess or castle themed cake. Do you want a simple rectangular sheet cake for ease of decorating? Or do you want to get a specific pan from a craft store or party store such as Joanne Crafts, Michael’s Crafts or Party America? Pans are available in a variety of fun shapes including animals, hearts, and characters like Blue from Blue’s Clues, or Dora from Dora the Explorer.

You can also use your imagination and basic geometric shapes to create the perfect cake:

• You can make a heart shaped cake using a square pan for half of the batter and a circular pan for the other half of the batter. Turn the square cake so a point is facing down. Then cut the circular cake in half and attach it to the sides of the cake. You can use frosting between the pieces to make sure they stay in place.
• You can make a train shaped cake by cutting rectangles and circles out of cooked cakes and piecing them together.

Decorating the Cake

homemade butterfly birthday cake

After you’ve decided on a theme, shape, and flavor, you are ready for the best part: decorating the cake. Your local grocery stores and craft stores have a variety of items that you can use to decorate your cake. These include:

• Plastic toys
• Candy
• Cookies
• Colored frosting
• Fresh fruit

Use your imagination, and mix frosting with candy and toys. For example, if you and your child have decided on a bug themed cake, you can make trees out of colored frosting and place plastic bugs on the leaves. You can let your child help with the decorating. The results may not be perfect to an adult’s eye, but an overly decorated cake covered with different colors of frosting, toys, and candy may be beautiful to your child.

Birthday Cupcake Ideas

Elephant cupcake for baby's first birthday

A great way to handle a small party or to celebrate with your child’s school is with cupcakes. You can individually decorate cupcakes to make them all look the same, or have each one look different. You may want to put frosting on each cupcake with a different letter of the alphabet to spell a word, such as your child’s name or a birthday greeting. You can even put a little candy treat or toy on top of each cupcake.

Internet sites like the ones below provide great ideas for decorating cupcakes:

• Betty Crocker has fun and easy looking cupcakes including sports balls, Dalmatians, and bugs.
• Cook’s Recipes has fun and yummy looking recipes for cupcakes.

One word of caution about cupcakes, though: individually decorated cupcakes can be a great deal more work than one big decorated cake.

Birthday Cake Summary

No matter what birthday cake idea your child dreams up, it can be bought or created. Use your imagination, listen to your child, and create the cake he wants. Even if your birthday cake is an aesthetic disaster due to your child’s specifications, you will be parent of the year because you respected your child's wishes.

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