When it comes to your childhood, few events are remember for a longer period of time than your birthday. You might not remember all of them, but some of the most special ones will stick out in your memory as if they happened yesterday. One way you can make your child’s birthday more memorable is to make an amazing cake that they’ll remember forever.
You probably know a lot about your child; their favorite TV show, toy, video game, sport, etc, and this step might not be necessary, but ask them “If you could do anything with your cake, what would it look like?” Kids have great imaginations, and next thing you know, they’re designing a 3 tiered cake with a moat, castle, and a dragon attacking some knights. This might seem like a daunting task at first, but creating such a cake is simpler than you think.
Once you have an idea of what they want, you have to, of course, simplify it a little bit. They’re going to give you an elaborate idea, without a doubt, and it’s going to be beyond your abilities, but with a little ingenuity you can find a compromise between your skills and their vision.
Next, decide how many layers your cake is going to need, the size and the shape of those layers, and just how far you’re willing to push the boundaries of your skills. For our castle example, you’re likely going to need at least 2 layers (each layer being a cake), and they can be either square or round.
Once you’ve baked your cakes, arranging them requires some patience, and a few toothpicks. For taller cakes, you might need dowel rods pushed through the entire structure for additional stability. Figuring out just how to shape and stack these cakes is part of the fun of making them. Once they’re stacked, you can use a bread knife to shape it appropriately. Often people add frosting between layers, but this is optional.
Finally, you have to learn how to make fondant, which will be used to cover the cake, and to make decorations, figures, and smaller shapes. Making fondant is pretty simple, and much cheaper than buying it at $6 or more per pound. For our castle example, the fondant will be used to cover the cake, and black lines drawn on to look like stones. It will also be used to make the dragon, knights, draw bridge, moat, and anything else that goes beyond the main shape of the cake.
When you see all of this happening on TV, it looks like an intimidating process, but it’s really not that difficult once you get started. Hopefully this how to guide has helped motivate you to give it a try. The cakes on TV are expensive, and often used in competition so they have to be perfect. Yours does not. An 8 year old is not going to remember the crack in the fondant on the side of his cake, he’s going to remember that he had a castle cake for his 8th birthday. Once you do this once, you can make more and more memorable cakes each year.
