cake ideas

Five Easy First Birthday Cake Ideas By Leefe Poche

First Birthday Cake Ideas

Do you need some first birthday cake ideas for a new baby in your life, or in someone's close to you? Well, here are some ideas for girls and boys. Take a couple of minutes to read this article and your brain will be whirring.

Number 1 Cake

You could always do the original thing and pour cake batter in a Number 1 cake pan and frost it blue or pink according to the gender, or you could be more elaborate and make a memorable first birthday cake. Accent the cake with other light baby colors and add balloons and a trim around the top and bottom of the cake.

Building Blocks Cake

Another popular first birthday cake is bright building blocks. Bake small square cake pieces, cool them on a baking rack for 30 minutes, then frost them each different bright and vibrant colors. A good one for girls are butterflies and flowers. Again when choosing frosting colors for these cakes pick bright eye catching colors because that is mostly what children of this age are drawn to.

How About Cupcakes?

Cupcakes are always a great first birthday cake. You can make personal cakes for everyone, adding sprinkles, different colored frosting, and if you want little pictures.

Car or Truck Cake

You can also make a car or truck cake for a boy. Frost it whatever color you would think is the best and simply decorate it with toy cars and trucks. Make sure when picking the cars and trucks out that their color flows with the color of the cake.

Princess Cake

And an old time favorite for girls is a princess cake. You can pick a Disney theme or you can make an original. One of the visitors to my site said that she usually just makes her princess cakes with purple frosting and she puts fake jewels and a crown on it.

I hope these ideas sparked your imagination and gave you some great ideas to make some picture perfect moments for your photo album.

cake decorations

Easy Cake Decorations For Elegant Cake Designs

By Ginger Parker

Ginger Parker
Level: Basic PLUS

With a lifelong interest in beautifully decorated cakes, Ginger Parker enjoys reading and writing about cake decorating techniques and trends....

Elegant cake designs don't have to be complicated. With a little bit of style or artistic flair, even easy cake decorations can be used to make elegant cake designs. These ideas use simple and inexpensive embellishments to make even a simple boxed cake mix look sophisticated and special.

One way to use edible cake decorations for elegant cakes is by focusing on tone-on-tone colors. Silver sprinkles or dragees, shiny edible ball sprinkles, look wonderful on a cake with white frosting. Sprinkles are the ultimate easy cake decorations, and using them in a single color on a matching color of frosting looks beautiful. Try yellow colored sugar sprinkles on pale yellow lemon frosting, or chopped nuts on light brown caramel frosting.

Sliced fruit is a great choice for easy cake decorations that are a little more festive but still sophisticated. Simple ripe red strawberries sliced and arranged in overlapping circles on dark chocolate frosting makes a decadent dessert. For even more decadence, macerate an assortment of berries by stirring them with a tablespoon or two of sugar and, optionally, a few tablespoons of your favorite liqueur. Refrigerate them in a bowl for several hours, then pour the syrupy berries over a cheesecake.

Another simple way to turn ordinary easy cake decorations into something special is to decorate only the sides of the cake, leaving the top with plain smooth icing. Chopped nuts, mini chocolate chips, shredded coconut, chopped candy bars, and crushed peppermint candies are all good choices for this method. To get the sides of the cake decorated, take a small handful at a time and gently press it into the frosting, working your way around the cake. Try doing this holding the cake at a slight angle over a large bowl of your chosen decoration, allowing the excess to fall back into the bowl and keeping your serving dish clean.

One final idea for elegant cake designs is a light dusting of powdered sugar, cocoa powder, cinnamon sugar, or colored decorating sugar. For best results, use a strainer or sifter to dust either an unfrosted cake or one that has been chilled to fully set the frosting. You can dust all over the top of the cake or use a stencil for a more polished look. Stencils are available at craft stores in hundreds of shapes, or you can make your own or use a paper doily. Go for an intricate geometric or lace design, or stencil the shape of an object or words to fit your theme or cake flavor. Be sure to dust the cake just before serving because the sugar will slowly dissolve on the cake.

With these easy cake decorations for elegant cake designs, you'll be able to impress your guests when even the most basic cake recipe looks like something special.

cake decorating ideas

Creative Cake Decorating Ideas
By Shereen Oon

Special occasion will always call for special cakes. Most celebrations are incomplete without a cake specially decorated to fit the occasion. While there are bakeries for the purpose, a member of the family will surely feel honored to make the cake specifically for that purpose. Fresh ideas may be needed in the decoration if you are assigned to make cakes. Here are a number of cake decorating ideas:

-Characters: There are many known characters that can be used in cake decorating. Cakes can be made special by drawing characters like Blues Clues or Dora the Explorer. Cutting up the cake to make it as the whole character is another option.

-Themes: Sport theme, underwater adventure, 50's or modern themes of 20's are some of the themes that you can use. Think about the recipient of the cake and the guests' reaction for the theme that you are considering. A masquerade party will finely go with the theme that you are planning.

-Motor Cakes: Most boys will always be fascinated with motors like cars, trucks, fire engines, tractors, boats, airplanes or helicopters. The expertise that you have in cake decorating will help you make racing strip, firemen on the run, or a 3 dimensional tractor plowing in the farm.

-Animals: You can cut the cake to have an image of animal as your theme. It could either be one animal or a scene in a zoo featuring many kinds of mammals or birds.

-Food: The preparation of the cake will also depend on the occasion that you are going to have. If it is about opening of Italian restaurant, you can have a scene where you can see a building or an image portraying a chef at work. Again you can cut the cake to represent foods like hot dog, taco or burgers. When it comes to food theme, the cake decorating ideas are limitless.

-Holiday Themes: Holidays are special and it will be a great time to show off your creativity. Bunnies will be good in Easter, hearts during Valentine's Day, or cloverleaf on the feast of St. Patrick.

-Your Own Creation: A lot of practice in cake decorating will give you flair of your own designs. You can readily make any kind of styles of cakes on any celebrations. The cake that you create will always be center of attention during any celebration.

The satisfaction that you will get from the praises will be worth any of the effort you put in. Spending time practicing will pay rich dividends as your cake decorating skills are sure to improve. Ask friends and experts or search the web for ideas in cake decorating and use them to hone your creative skills.