8 Awesome Birthday Cakes

so far we have always got a place vanilla butter cream sheet cake from Wegmans which we decorate ourselves to fit the theme of the party..
http://henatayeb.blogspot.com/2014/08/d-turns-four.html and http://henatayeb.blogspot.com/2015/09/d-turns-five.html

You should probably go with whatever flavor Anton likes the best. I think a simple cake with little toys on top makes a great birthday treat–you get cake and toys!

how fun! one year, my friend made me bacon-wrapped scallops with a brie dipping sauce instead of a cake since i’m a savory>sweet girl :)

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The rice krispie treat cake is such a cute and unique idea! My mom always made cakes in the shapes of easter/spring things (most memorably a bunny) since my birthday always fell around Easter.

Growing up in Australia, I definitely had a few of the Australian Women’s Weekly cakes, they were amazing! I can remember the pig, the 4, the train and the dancing girl cake. My usual cake though was a rainbow ice cream cake, since my birthday is in the middle of summer :-)

Definitely something from the AWW cake book!
I grew up with their cakes & I love that my children are now choosing the same cakes my siblings & I had all those years ago.
Our cake book actually lives in my husband’s car & my girls entertain themselves for ages flipping through & choosing what cake they’ll have. Even if it does change on a daily basis!!

Ooooh, I love all of these!

My son always loved a volcano cake. It was brownies stacked into a pyramid with whipped cream coming out of it and sparkler candles. It was a hit every year.

My sister does: brownie mix on the bottom and baked. Then any flavor ice cream (very soft) spread across that. Then cool whip spread across that. If you freeze it, you can decorate it anyway you want. So easy and delicious and easily customizable. Growing up we got this rum cake…layers of cake and rum-flavored filling with the frosting on the outside covered in chopped walnuts. Its memorable. but not my favorite. I love angel food cake (with powdered sugar but you could also do fruit), or pineapple upside down cake.

I used to be OBSESSED with chocolate wafer icebox cake, and had it every year for my birthday growing up. It’s delicious, so easy to make (which is great for kids), and the best part is that when you cut it diagonally, your slice is striped black and white! For this reason it earned the name “zebra cake,” making it even more of a hit with kids. The best.

Oh, I love the Rice Krispie cake idea! We adopted our twin daughters from Japan so I make a Cherry Blossom Cake (we often refer to our girls as our cherry blossoms)- a simple white fluffy cake with pureed cherries mixed in topped with dreamy white frosting speckled ever so lightly with more of the pureed cherries. I then cut out cherry blossoms from pink fondant for a pretty touch that our girls love. http://www.jeansandatea.com

We’ve done themed cakes for my boys in the past, but lately we seem to go back to a cookie cake or a brownie cake with cream cheese icing, which they request for all birthdays in our family! So simple and good, and you can decorate any way you’d like. :-)

Growing up here in Belgium, our mum always made a candy train cake. There are a lot of elaborate recipes and designs to be found, but she did an easy and delicious version.
Bake 2 rectangle shaped vanilla cakes (or use store bought vanilla cake, always worked). Cut up the cakes into a locomotives and cars and assemble on a plate. And then the decorating could start (something which she always let us help her with). She usually made butter frosting to stick the candy to the train. We used gummy bears as passengers, sour flying saucers for wheels, and basically any type of candy we liked to stick to the cars and locomotives. Best memories!

My mom is an excellent baker, and thankfully I inherited her skills! She has a recipe passed down from her grandmother that she made for every birthday. To this day, our family refers to it as “birthday cake.” It’s a simple, 3-layer vanilla cake with “marshmallow” frosting (basically whipped egg whites and sugar). The cake was always frosted white, and then we’d add a color of our choice to write Happy Birthday _____ on top. It is still one of my absolute favorite cakes, and reminds me of my childhood. I recently adapted it into cupcakes for a friend’s baby shower, and they were a huge hit!

Southern Living had a vanilla cake on their December cover a few years ago and it is seriously delicious! We interchange the fillings but this has become our defacto standard cake!

My father’s family is from New Orleans, so we order a king cake every year for my son’s February birthday. It is my favorite tradition (aside from Gumbo on NYE) and the kids love searching for the baby hidden inside.

i grew up in hershey, pennsylvania where chocolate is (obviously) king. i was never a big fan of traditional cakes so my mom would always order a cookie cake from Chocolate World! nothing wows kiddos like a chocolate chip cookie bigger than their faces :)

another fun pennsylvania tradition: whoopie pies. like donuts, these could be easy to stack & serve, and come in amazing flavor combinations!

We do Smitten Kitchen’s Yellow Birthday Cake. It’s soooooo delicious, but we use vanilla buttercream frosting because that’s what my girls like. Every year they choose the theme. Last year it was pink and purple fairies. This year, it will be a “girl’s Star Wars cake” with Rey, Leia and Captain Phasma toys.

Sometimes, I put lemon curd or chocolate ganache between the layers. Everyone in our family raves about this cake.

All 107 of the women’s weekly cakes have just been displayed here for a charity event – the first time they’d ever all been made up in the one place.
http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2016-05-07/women's-weekly-children's-birthday-cakes-go-on-display/7393306

I love having my kids look through The Birthday Book and sharing cakes from my childhood with them. I also love this kind of baking and decorating so I make a cake of their choice every year, but kids just love being loved – simple cakes and low key traditions are such beautiful memories too. The beauty is all in the love. (And there’s much beauty in parents not being stressed out of their skulls for the sake of a little kids party!)
I’ve also heard this tip: buy a square tub of ice cream, tip it out on a plate, decorate with lollies = totally fabulous ice cream cake.

I love the pancake idea!

I love that you included the swimming pool cake (my all time favourite) from the Australian Womens Weekly recipe book – its iconic in NZ and Australia and most kids grew up having birthday cakes from that book. Im now in my mid 30s and my friends and I are now making cakes from the recipe book for our children.

For 4 and under we did cupcakes with whipped cream and berries. For 5+, decorate your own cupcake is the new tradition. Both are low on effort and enjoyed by the kids. I am not into theme-y cakes and growing up I got to choose the flavour of cake and icing but it was almost always a “normal” cake.

One year my mum did a “hamburger” cake though with marzipan lettuce and cheese peeping out between chocolate and vanilla layer cakes. And when I was 8, she made a “number”cake . My husband remembers a year his mom baked his cakes in ice cream cones. I think those ones stand out more since we didn’t get a crazy cake every year. I love your low key approach especially as you are a high profile blogger who could easily feel the pressure to turn your kids parties into over-produced events. The simple and fun we see will surely be making the best memories for them. I hope you will share what you and Anton decide on!

Love the toys! One of our favorite back-to-school parties was a bug hunt with a Central Park ranger, pizza delivered to the park and cupcakes with toy bugs and butterflies on top.

these cakes are so cool! I love the rice crispy one
xo
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Chocolate dump cake in a bundt pan. It’s been my son’s request since he could talk. He’s now 30 and still wants it. My daughter loves cheesecake. She chooses a different one each year.

Love that you included the Aussie cookbook.

At the start of our birthday month my siblings and I were allowed to get down the book and choose our cake for that year. It was serious business. So much thought went into choosing! And then my poor Mum had to make them all.

When I fell pregnant I gave a copy of the book to my Sister In Law and told her she was responsible for all future birthday cakes for my daughter. I don’t have a baking gene in my body but happy to know that the tradition lives on!

So thrilled you featured the Australian Women’s Weekly birthday cake book. Every Aussie kid I grew up with pored over that book for a whole 364 days before their next birthday. And even opening it now brings back fond memories for me – I can still tell you which cakes I had made for me growing up. I continue the tradition for my husband and sons (who, unluckily for me, have birthdays within 5 days of each other). Last year, for their combined birthday party, I made the lion, the giraffe and the duck. A triumph, although I was up until 1am perfecting them! Really helps to stick to one colour of icing!