Whether it is a guitar for a teen musician's birthday, a ship for a going away party or a Scooby Doo cake for a child's birthday; the character or novelty cake continues to be a favorite, especially the kind that is so for real made with a mold cake pan. Character and novelty pans are sold at large craft shop and baking provide stores. You can also find them online from well- known suppliers.
We're seeing more and more castle cakes at parties now too, from Cinderella's castle to exciting sculptures for Renaissance events.
Cake Ideas
The more unusual birthday party cakes are getting lots of attentiveness lately, such as the volcano cake. It's not your typical chocolate lava cake that's for sure! This one steams and spews lava, thanks to dry ice and one of the fun cake recipes from "Cake Decorating Made Easy!" Here's what one reader wrote about our Video Books:
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Another unique and fun cake idea is the beach pail cake. A distinction of the flowerpot cake (a fun one for a gardener or kids by the way), the beach pail cake is a big hit with toddlers who enjoy for real digging into their cakes.
A plastic beach pail is filled with pudding cake and topped with a thin layer of cookie crumb sand. Vanilla sandwich cookies are a good selection for this because the filling adds some moisture to the crumbs. And when the cake's "all gone" your toddler has a new toy!
Speaking of toys, doll cakes continue to please. Barbie type dolls featuring a real doll with a cake and icing dress are popular not only with young school age girls, but grown up girls as well. Creating this type of cake appeals to the fashion designer in us!
And last but not least, buttercream and royal icing roses continue to be a top request for cakes from a young girl's birthday to a grandmother's seclusion party.
Wedding Cake Ideas
The word from wedding cake designers is "Less is more." Today's bride prefers a far less ornate design. Whether classic or whimsical, understated is often preferred. Fondant continues to be a popular cake surface because its satiny flat quit lends itself well to the wedding cake ideas that brides are bringing to their cake decorators.
Many of the more popular cake ideas are arrival from an Asian influence, such as white decorations on white icing, accented lightly with red.
Popular wedding cake ideas are also influenced by the current wave of colors that are replacing the white fondant and buttercream.
Ice blue, light blush, rum pink, and lavender are providing the backgrounds for quietly elegant or whimsical decorations such as silver polka dots, sugar crystallized fruits and daisies. Roses, orchids and lilies continue to be part of today's wedding cake ideas.
Of course, decorating alone doesn't make a great cake. Taste and texture count too!
And here's one more cake idea: For an easy to make castle cake, use empty paper towel tubes and ice cream cones (the sugar cone variety) for the turrets. Or just the cones alone can be used.
Cover them first with icing and glue with royal icing to a graduated quadrilateral or round, stacked cake (use two or more graduated quadrilateral pans to generate the cake). Fly colorful flags off the top of the turrets. These can be made with building paper, cut in triangular shapes and attached with icing or glue to toothpicks.
If you have sufficient ice cone turrets to go around, you could even fill the cones with icing - that is if you do this just before serving!
Cake Ideas From Our "Most Popular" List
