Kids' Birthday Cakes

• Family Fun birthday cake finder – This site is searchable and has excellent instructions and photos of the finished cakes. Advertising on the pages is family friendly.

• Betty Crocker web site – This site is searchable and, of course, features Betty Crocker products. Instructions are clear and there are pictures of the finished cakes.

• Kids Domain web site – This site is less sophisticated than the corporate sites above, but it includes a number of good ideas surrounded by family friendly advertising.

Browse or search these sites to find a variety of cakes that require a range of skills levels. If you’re not handy with a pastry tube, consider decorating options such as candy, toys, colored sugar or coconut, or stenciling to design your cake.

If you are not a confident baker, use a purchased cake mix or buy a plain cake from your local bakery or big box store. Frozen sheet cakes are especially easy to decorate, because the icing sets up on the well. You can frost plain cake with purchased icing as well, but make your own decorator icing if you plan to decorate the cake with decorator tips.

Remember that kids’ tastes in birthday cakes are usually simple. You’ll probably want to choose a plain white, yellow, chocolate, or vanilla/chocolate marble cake. Children usually won’t appreciate fancy fruit or cream fillings between the layers of a cake. Keep it simple and focus on the appearance of the cake.

Kinds of Cakes

Round or Sheet Cakes

Round layer cakes and rectangular sheet cakes can be easily decorated with written greetings (icing or gel), small themed toys, candy, colored sugar, or colored coconut. If you are skillful, you can draw elaborate designs on either type of cake.

Cut-to-Shape Cakes

Start with round, square, and/or rectangular cakes. Geometric shapes are combined to make a variety of simple finished shapes. These cakes lend themselves to animal shapes, building, and vehicles. A cat’s head can be made from a round cake with triangular shapes for ears; a train can be made from a variety of rectangles combined with circles for wheels. A little red school house can be made by combining rectangles and triangles. Cupcakes are often used for small circular shapes. Ice cream cones are occasionally added to make feature like a clown’s hat, or a birds’s beak.

Molded Cakes

Kitchen stores like Williams-Sonoma and Crate and Barrel offer both full-sized and mini cake pans and molds in a variety of shapes. Wilton sells a large number of cake molds, many featuring popular cartoon and fictional characters, through retail and online craft stores like Michaels and JoAnns. The Wilton web site provides baking tips for use of its cake pans and molds. There are also numerous online baking supply sites where cake pans and molds can be purchased. Once a molded cake is baked and cooled, you simply use shape to guide the application of icing and other decorations.

Doll cakes

These simple but showy cakes are made by inserting a naked 9’ – 13 doll into the middle of a baked tube or bunt cake. Icing simulating a full-skirted gown is applied with decorating tip.

Things You Can Use to Decorate a Kids’ Birthday Cake

goldfish birthday cake

Icing decorations

Create designs with a pastry tube, decorating tip, and decorator icing

Pre-made hard royal icing decorations

Available from the supermarket, party store, or craft store, these decorations provide a quick fix, but little in the way of flavor to a cake.

Miniature toys

Use a miniature train on an icing or licorice whip track or cars on a colored sugar road. Or, use dinosaurs to create a pre-historic world. Small plastic toys present almost endless possibilities

Candy

Candy comes in such a wide variety of shapes and colors; the possibilities for designing a cake with candy decorations are almost endless. Both black and red licorice whips lend themselves to lines and letter.

Stencils and colored sugar, powdered sugar, or cocoa

Buy or cut a stencil and sprinkle colored sugar through the stencil to make a design. On a chocolate cake, use powdered sugar to stencil the design; on light colored icing, use cocoa.