Birthday Cakes

My siblings and I have always been really lucky to have a mum that made crazy birthday cakes for us when we were younger. There have been cats, dinosaurs, hedgehogs (which I may have dropped on the floor in excitement…), Witch’s cauldrons and my ultimate favourite: my fairy princess castle. It was for my fourth birthday and was bright pink with four turrets; yes TURRETS and we had a bouncy castle. I think when I was younger I sort of assumed that everyone had birthdays like these but I got to a certain age where I realised that I was just really lucky and my mum is an absolute star.

Because University is basically like being a kid again my friend Jenna and I have got into the habit of baking mental, personalised cakes for people’s birthdays. They make a really thoughtful gift and I’ve yet to meet someone that didn’t love a special cake made just for them!  

Here’s a little showcase of some of the ones we’ve done:

Portuguese Cake

This was made for my Portuguese friend so we baked a red layer and a green layer to be like their national flag. We then iced a dodgy looking motorcycle (he’s a biker) and decorated the top and filled the middle with Milky Bar because it’s his favourite.  A really good tip if you’re struggling with how to make a personalised cake is to make copious use of their favourite sweet!

Disc Cake

This is supposed to be a mixing disk for a friend who does Music Tech. at Uni. It is without a doubt the unhealthiest cake we have ever made. Guaranteed diabetes on a plate. A 6 egg mixture, it has a whole tub of butter and a whole bag a sugar in the mixture. It then has ANOTHER tub of butter and a whole bag of icing sugar in the middle and on the top, covered by black royal icing. Hiding in the middle is about 3 kinder eggs too. It makes me feel a bit ill thinking about it to be honest. No one could actually manage a slice so we just ate it using spoons…

Llama Cake

The Llama cake is definitely still my firm favourite. We also had ridiculous looking llama costumes but I won’t subject you to a picture of those. My friend is obsessed with llamas so when we we’re thinking about her cake it was obvious what we needed to do! We made the llama by baking 4 small loaf cakes. We then used 2 for the body, 1 for the neck and 1 for the head, ears and legs. We had a lot of trouble getting the neck to stand up so we ended up slicing it into four and cementing them on top of one another like building blocks. We then used a few toothpicks to support the ears. Animal cakes are the most fun to bake I reckon.

Catherine Tate Cake

We made this for a friend who loves a bit of Catherine Tate. I know it really doesn’t look anything like her but hey, it’s the thought that counts. We used a tiny drop of red and a tiny drop of blue colouring to make the pale skin coloured icing. Then we used my trusty piping bag to pipe her bright auburn locks, and a sprinkle of edible glitter to give her shiny hair!

The next time you have a friend’s birthday coming up, set aside a few hours and make them a personal cake! Trust me, it’s totally worth it for the look on their face, because even in our twenties everyone loves to feel like a kid again : )