Easy Cake Decorating Tips: Make Cakes Your Kids Will Love!

Would you love to make themed birthday cakes for your kids or a pretty cake for your friend, but you have no idea where to start? How on earth do you make the Shopkins cake that your youngest has asked for for their birthday? Or a monster truck cake? Follow my 4-step process and use my easy cake decorating tips for inspiration and you can come up with your own ideas simply and easily!

I love to find easy ways of making fun cakes for my kids (and my husband!) that look effective, but aren’t too fiddly or difficult. I don’t have the patience (or the hand-eye coordination!) for fancy creations with fondant icing or piping bags, but I have found a few basic techniques and tricks that are working for me.

I’ll show you a few cakes I’ve made in the last couple of years, but these are iPhone photos so the lighting and composition won’t be the best!

Let’s start at the beginning…

Step 1. The Cake

Have a basic cake recipe or two up your sleeve that you know you can make to use as your base. I usually use a classic Victoria Sandwich recipe (This is Mary Berry’s from the BBC Food website) or an easy chocolate cake recipe I also found on the BBC Food website a few years ago. A rectangular traybake cake is also really useful. Which cake recipe I use depends on the shape and colour I need the cake to be (more on that in a minute).

Otherwise, to save time, there is nothing wrong with picking up an un-iced cake from the supermarket and making it your own!

Which shape should you make?

I prefer to use a rectangular traybake cake for kids parties because it’s easy to cut up into little squares and it’s usually only one layer, so there’s no need for a filling. This is also a good option if you want to make a shape (e.g. a butterfly, or a truck) or set up a little scene on the cake. I usually make a round cake if it’s just for family or if it’s for an adult.

If you want to make a shape with a traybake cake, I recommend experimenting with cutting shapes from a sheet of A4 paper first!

What colour?

A chocolate cake is great if you just want to top it with chocolates, or if your theme needs earth or grass as the base.

A plain vanilla sponge is great if you are using lighter coloured icing, or if you want to colour the actual cake e.g. pink.

Step 2. Icing

This will be the base of your theme. Get the base right and all you have to do is add some little toys or sweets

My first make-your-life-easier tip with icing is to only ice the top of your cake and don’t worry about the sides. Icing the sides takes a lot longer and is more difficult. If you can avoid it, do, unless you are feeling confident or it is important for your cake design.

Always allow your cake to cool completely before icing. A warm cake will make your icing run or sink into the cake.

Sometimes crumbs can come off a cake and mix with the icing while you’re working. One way to get around this is to brush any crumbs off first, then heat a little jam with a splash of water and brush this over the cake to seal it before icing. Apricot jam has the gentlest flavour, so is the most commonly used for this purpose. If using buttercream or roll-out sugarpaste to top a cake, then use a thin layer of buttercream icing as a ‘crumb coat’ instead. Allow it to set in the fridge before adding a thicker layer.

Here are some of the easiest and most common icing types:

Glacé Icing

This is the easiest icing to make. It makes a smooth shiny top and is easy to flavour and colour. You simply mix sifted icing sugar with water or other liquid. Sprinkles and other small decorations stick well to glacé icing whilst it is still wet.

Add a drop of food colouring to white icing to make it whatever colour you like.

To flavour glacé icing you can use essences like peppermint, rosewater, strong coffee, add cocoa powder and water or milk to make chocolate flavour, or fruit juices like lemon, orange or pineapple.

To get a smooth surface, especially if you would like the top and sides iced in a solid colour, add enough liquid to your icing to make it just pourable, then use a jug to pour it over your cake. Use a 1 layer cake for pouring icing, not a sponge sandwich.

Since it’s a nice smooth surface, you can write or draw on top of glacé icing easily using little tubes of ‘writing icing’. Practise on a piece of baking paper first!

Buttercream Icing

The icing I use most often for birthday cakes is buttercream icing. It can be used as a filling and/or a topping, and can be piped or swirled (if you have a steady enough hand for that sort of thing!). It can be made deeper than most other kinds of icing, so you can stick larger decorations into it. Keep your cake refrigerated after icing to keep it firm if the weather is warm.

Chocolate buttercream is great to use as a base for any theme involving grass or mud, or for chocolate lovers. I’ve used this for a monster truck cake, a Minecraft cake and a chocolate cake covered in M&Ms for my husbands birthday.

Royal Icing

Made with egg whites and icing sugar, this is a crunchy icing, mostly used on Christmas cakes. Because you can make it stand up in little peaks, it is a great option to use for a snowy or icy effect, or coloured blue it can make a wave effect e.g. for a surfy cake or maybe a pirate theme.

Sugarpaste (fondant)

This is a roll-out icing best bought rather than made at home. It makes a smooth solid colour topping and you can cut out flat shapes with cookie cutters or make little models as if it were modelling clay.

Step 3. Add Texture

This step will not always be necessary, but this is where you can really add something extra to your design. Here are some easy ideas:

Sprinkles

Sprinkles are a really simple way to make a cake look celebratory! There are so many different colours and shapes to choose from now. You can make shapes on your cake using a cookie cutter resting on your icing and a spoon to pour in a layer of sprinkles.

Chocolates and Sweets

Another really simple idea is to use sweets: Maltesers, M&Ms, Skittles, mini marshmallows, foam sweets, crushed or chopped chocolate bars. These add texture, colour and decadence!

Dirt and Logs

Use chocolate buttercream icing and top with piles of crushed chocolate biscuits e.g. Oreos. I used this technique for my son’s Monster Truck cake.

Logs for the top or sides of a cake can be made with chocolate fingers or wafer sticks. They will hold best in buttercream icing.

Grass

Glacé icing coloured green makes a smooth surface for a sports field or golf course. Use white writing icing to draw lines.

Or

Put desiccated coconut in a sandwich bag, add a drop or 2 of green food colouring and keep scrunching until the colour is evenly distributed. Sprinkle over chocolate buttercream icing. I made this Minecraft cake with a rectangular traybake cake, cut and rearranged to look like a pile of blocks and topped with chocolate buttercream, crushed Oreos on the sides, green coloured coconut and Minecraft toys on top.

Beach

Use glacé or buttercream icing coloured blue for the sea, then top one side with a layer of finely crushed biscuits e.g. Arrowroot/Rich Tea.

Snow

Use pourable white glace icing alone for a smooth ‘icy’ finish, or split your icing in half, colour 1 half a very light blue, then barely marble the two colours together before pouring over your cake.

or

Top white glacé icing with desiccated coconut while still wet for a fluffy snow effect. Dip Maltesers in your leftover icing, then roll in more coconut to make snow balls.

Step 4. Add Decorations

This is where you add little toys, a ‘happy birthday’ sign, a name banner, candles etc. Whatever you like to finish off your cake.

Plastic dinosaurs or animals, Lego characters, Lego bricks, cars, Shopkins, Minecraft toys, tiny treasure chests and little army men all look great!

I hope this post has given you lots of ideas to use in the future. I’d love to hear about your creations in the comments!

Check out my Pinterest boards for more ideas.