Hopefully by now you’ve noticed the big changes around here with our new blog design. One reason I’ve been so excited to have things redesigned was so that from time to time, we can share a little more than just hairstyles. We now have a “lifestyle” section that I can include these “non-hair” things in, and I’ve been antsy to use it! Mainly because I don’t just love hair! I have other interests and passions too! If you follow us on Instagram or other social media, you’ve seen some of our non-hair things, like the birthday cakes I’ve created over the years. And that’s what I’m sharing today – a birthday cake idea. Or two or four! If you’re not a professional — GOOD! Either am I! In my opinion, most anyone can make these birthday cakes.
If you like birthday cakes, frosting, Whoppers, candy, Kit Kat candy bars, basketball or birthdays, there is likely a cake in this post for you!
In the first couple months of the year we have 4 birthdays at our house which means I’m baking and decorating cakes. (Well the 4th birthday is my mom, and she’s definitely worth celebrating too!) I will give my disclaimer right now — I AM NOT a professional cake decorator, and have never taken a cake decorating class. I’m also not a food blogger that takes magazine-like pictures of my cakes. I also don’t use fondant. These cakes are ones that anyone can make. They aren’t hard – just a bit time consuming perhaps! I’ve mainly taken pictures of my cakes to share with family, but now I can finally share more of them with you too! Maybe one of these days I’ll take video of my decorating, but for now, I just have pictures.
Cake #1 – Chocolate Whopper Cake
My husband celebrates his birthday toward the beginning of January. Some years he leaves the creativity up to me, but this year he just said he wanted Whoppers (malt chocolate covered candies) on his cake. He wasn’t very specific more than Whoppers, but as you can see, I took him serious!
I think I knew it before, but by making this cake, I found out for sure, that not all Whoppers are created equal! They are NOT the same size, shape and they are not always coated evenly in chocolate! This made for quite the process of trying to make this look half way decent!
I baked two 9″ rounds, put chocolate frosting in the middle, then coated the entire thing in chocolate frosting. (I’ll share our Porter Chocolate Frosting recipe at a later time!) Then I went back and placed hundreds of Whoppers. I wish I could say how many I used, but I didn’t count. I did use several of the movie size boxes of Whoppers, because when I went grocery shopping they were cheaper than the milk carton ones!
Cake #2 – Watch or Clock Birthday Cake
Bee also has a birthday in January. She is always specific about what she wants for a cake. Last year it was a blobfish cake (I’ll have to share that one later). That cake challenged me big time! But this year I think she had pity on me and simply said she wanted a cake that looked like her turquoise watch. This was probably one of the simplest cakes yet! She was very specific that she wanted the time pointing to 1:30. Because that’s her birthday – January 30th! Cute idea I thought!
Again, I baked two 9″ rounds. I promise I have more than round cake pans, and this old Tupperware cake base, but after this post you might wonder!
I used my one of my food color gels from my AmeriColor Soft Gel Paste Kit
She loved how it turned out and so that always is a bonus!
Here’s several more shots of the cake from different angles. Bee also was specific that she wanted a knob on the side of the cake, just like her watch has to adjust the time.
You can see in the lower left picture below, I added texture to the frosting. It’s an old trick I learned years ago that you gently press a textured paper towel into the frosting and you get fun designs!
Cake #3 – Chocolate Kit Kat Birthday Cake
Next up is my mom’s cake. Depending on the year, I haven’t always made her a cake, but she was celebrating a milestone birthday this year and so I thought it would be fun to make one for her. Mom’s favorite treat is a Kit Kat so I decided to have a bit of fun with that.
Again, I’m working with 9″ rounds. However, I baked 2 different flavored cakes. I used chocolate and white cakes and added chocolate frosting to hold everything together. Then I frosted the whole outside of the cake with our Porter Chocolate Frosting (recipe to come). I bought 2 bags of mini Kit Kat’s. I thought it would be fun to have white chocolate and regular ones to make a fun pattern.
As you can see inside, I alternated the layers. I had 4 cakes, but only ended out using 3 of them. I used a star tip and piped the number 70 on top and added some little stars/flowers around the sides of the cake so it wasn’t as plain. This birthday cake was a big hit and was great for her milestone of turning 70 years old!
Cake #4 – Basketball Birthday Cake
And last, but certainly not least, my oldest turned 15 years old recently. As she gets older, her cake requests get less crazy! She recently just finished up basketball at the middle school so she thought a basketball cake would be awesome.
Once again 9″ rounds were used to create this cake. I do have a 3D Wilton Sports Ball Pan
My cute 15 year old basketball player. Her jersey number was 13, but I opted to put her age around the cake instead!
I had my phone sitting close by when I was decorating, so I took pictures each time I filled in one of the sections on the ball! Ignore the hole in the cake! It was easily covered up with some frosting! 
So there you have it! I love decorating birthday cakes. It’s become tradition for me to do something fun each year for each of the girls and my husband. We always have this “big cake reveal” and no one else can see it before they do!
In the future, I’m excited to share some of my favorite frosting recipes, and more pictures and how-to’s for cakes we’ve done in the past. Comment and let us know which birthday cake or (birthday cakes) are your fav and be sure to pin these and share with your friends & family!