An All-Of-The-Above Birthday Cake, #Never Too Much of a Good Thing

How to choose an above all birthday cake from the gazillion awesome ideas out there.
Warning: Post contains extreme danger of sugar overdose.

How To Choose a Birthday Cake Design

When There Are a Gazillion and One Ideas Out There

Warning:  This post contains an extreme danger of overdosing on cake, sprinkles, frosting, and everything else you can put in between layers of cake.  

The first step to choosing a birthday cake design (in this case for my DIL’s birthday) is to open all the images that appeal to the given occasion.  Plus a few extra fall designs or kid designs for good measure, just because they’re so unbelievably cute.

When you have so many choices that you don’t have enough tabs available on top of your screen, you know it’s time to begin fine-tuning the choices.

Maybe you can help me out here.

Let’s do a quick “Which One Would You Pick” poll.

 

Gilded Watercolor Cake

I’ve been into watercolor lately, so with the promise of glitter on top of that?

Of course I opened the article.  Brit+Co has beautiful, complete instructions, so you can’t go wrong.

Shall we pick this one?

 

 

Another Watercolor Cake

This beautiful cake is more compatible with the easy gourmet ways we have going on at our house.

I can use my regular buttercream frosting recipe, which everyone seems to love.

Simple tinted frosting, applied with the offset spatula on this cake, versus mixing gel colors and clear vanilla extract to create the watercolors for the first cake, then brushing them on with a paint brush.

This seems like a really good choice.

But I’ll look at a few more, since just having two picks would make things too easy.

 

 

Milk and Cookies Cake

Style Sweet really has it going on with gorgeous yet simple cakes.

The really exciting twist to this layer cake is the cookie dough filling between the layers.

Yes, I know.

Who doesn’t love raw chocolate chip cookie dough?

And then – wait for it – A milk soak for the cake layers!

Sweet, sweet yumminess.

All that isn’t really anything a newbie couldn’t do.  Follow the recipe and you’re there.

And the frosting and finishing follows the same easy direction.

(Those perfect brown polka-dots? They’re upside down chocolate chips. Can you get any smarter and simpler?)

This one is really tempting.  But let’s see…

 

 

Luxurious Piped Rosettes Cake

This lovely cake by Blissfully Sweet Bakery looks complicated, but trust me, it’s not. Place a Wilton Size 2D closed rosette tip into a large frosting bag, and start squeezing.

These piped rosettes are easy, easy, easy.

Did I say easy?

They’re the best for covering cupcakes, by the way, because you don’t even have to crumb coat your cake first.  Just hold a bare cupcake, and a few swirls later, voila – a beautiful rose covered cupcake.

This cake is the same as a cupcake, other than that you need three bags of frosting with three different shades of peach.  Or the color of your choice.  For my birthday girl, that would be lavender.

Put the cake in the fridge for a half hour or so.  If it is chilled rosette, fails can be peeled off easily.

This one sounds really attractive to me…

 

 

Pink and Aqua Sprinkle Cake

And what could be faster (and more fun) than smoothing frosting on a cake and throwing some sprinkles at it?

Everyone loves sprinkles. They’re so happy and party-ful looking.

You just have to smile when you see sprinkles.

And did you know, you can get some glittery, star-dusty, galaxy style sprinkles now?

Best cake ever!

 

 

Still need more inspiration?

Check out this post. And prepare to be amazed!

 

I’ve Made My Choice

There’s no photo for this one, because it’s still in my imagination.

This is what it’s going to be…

A sheet cake for a large “canvas,” without worrying about layers and frosting sides of stuff.

Crumb coat with a thinned layer of our favorite buttercream frosting recipe.

Splotch white and lavender blobs all over the top.  Smooth with the offset spatula for a pale white and lavender watercolor effect.

Cut an oval pattern out of paper, and use it to mark an oval on the frosting. Outline the oval with upside down chocolate chips.

In one corner, pipe lavender rosettes of various sizes at the edge of the dotted oval.  Do some small ones in the opposite corner.

Sprinkle the rosettes with glittery sprinkles.

Pipe the Happy Birthday message.

Pipe an edging.

Done.

And we have it all.  A little bit of the best from all of the above cakes.

Could a birthday be sweeter than that?