Tropical Beach Birthday Cake with Candy Details

Need an idea for a tropical beach themed birthday cake? Boom. Here you have it. It’s bright and fun, with flowers, surf boards, leis, sand, coconuts, fish and more. (It looks more complicated than it really is.) And the kids LOVED it.

If you’ve worked with fondant before, I’m confidant you’ll be able to put this cake together. Many of the fondant details need to be made ahead of time so they can dry. But really, that’s not a big deal. Just put on your favorite show while you work and enjoy a little time to be creative.

Do you enjoy seeing how other artists work things out before they settle on a final piece? I do. So, I thought I’d share the original sketches I used to suss out the ideas. You can see which cake won out.

Take away and use any ideas you like! I hope this fosters some ideas in YOU! Let me know how it goes. I completely enjoy the back and forth of creative sharing.

Check THESE other cake decoration ideas out.

Give Your Friend the Cutest Ever Baby Shower Cake

This is what I made for a friend, and would be great for a baby shower. I love that it turned out so cute and pregnant looking. Squeee! It’s adorable. Show this photo to your local cake decorators and they could whip this out pretty easily. (Hey, I’m a novice, and I did it!)

It’s always fun to see where creative ideas come from so I thought I’d share the sketch I started out with. The sketches start with a few ideas I think I can pull off, based on what ingredients and supplies I have on hand. Below is where I thought I might take the design:

See how the final didn’t match my drawing? No biggie! It happens quite often during the creative process—a better idea reveals itself and you just go with the flow.

The cake itself was Hershey's Deep Dark Chocolate Cake, with a chocolate ganache and strawberry preserve filling. This chocolate cake is my go-to. It’s moist and rich, and I’ve never had any problems with the recipe. You can find it here. (This is NOT an ad nor an affiliated link, I just really love the flavor of this cake.)
More cake decorating ideas can be found here.

Strawberry Cake Decor

Need an idea for a cute cake? Here's a simple strawberry themed two tiered cake. Keep reading for instructions and tools you will need.

This cake was created for a Wilton cake class I took through Michael's a few years ago. I was so tired of making flowers that I wanted to do something a little different for our assignment. Enter the cute strawberry!

The strawberries are made of fondant and shaped by hand. The little seed indents are made with a tooth pick and the hull was cut out of fondant using the “star” shaped cutter below. Just pinch the tips and press a line down the center of each flap with a tooth pick. (Toothpicks are such a handy go-to tool!)

The blossoms used the rose cutter seen below. I put a slit between each petal with an Exacto knife so that I could lift and curve each petal. The centers are piped in using a grass tip with yellow frosting.

Lastly, can you see the little curly tendrils on the cake? Those were painted on with a brush and green food coloring.

All the cutters, including the leaf shape (not shown) can be found in the Wilton Rose Bouquet Flower Cutter Set found here.

Fore more cake ideas CLICK HERE.

Cake Eight

I know, it's a weird title. A few years ago I took a cake class and this is the eighth cake…actually the eighth cake I've ever decorated in my life. Although there are some things I would do differently now…I still really like the white flowers on top of a marbled look. Hope this gives you some ideas.

Fore more cake ideas CLICK HERE.

Lemon Orange Wedding Cake

This cake was made for a young women's youth group activity, where we had wedding dresses for the girls to try on! So of course we had to have "wedding cake" as a refreshment.

It is a sour cream pound cake with homemade lemon/orange curd as the filling. I like using pound cake for tiered cakes...the bread holds up so well and the flavor and texture is SO good and dense. The floral decorating uses a brush embroidery technique. The cake took 5.5 hours to frost and decorate.

For more cake ideas CLICK HERE.