Supermarket cake hack

[Scarylady]

I need to buy a birthday cake for my daughters birthday party and usually I pay £60 plus for someone to make her a pretty one.

This year I’m thinking of just buying a supermarket cake and trying to give it the wow factor myself.

Has anyone done this before and willing to share their ideas?

Someone I know loves decorating cakes and makes some amazing ones but she hates baking so she does this - buys a supermarket cake and then does some amazing decoration

M&S have the best supermarket cakes.

I did this for my daughters birthday with an M&S cake. Bought some lovely toppers and popped them on the cake - looked very special. You can get some great stuff online.

I buy one of these although there is a Madeira flavour as well. Spread butter icing around the outside (2 parts icing sugar to 1 part butter). Stick chocolate fingers / kitkat fingers / matchmakers around the edge. Anything that comes above the top of the cake. Fill the top with fruit / maltesers / smarties.

Ends up looking a bit like this although better. If fact just google any lorraine pascal cake. She all style over substance and a lot of her cakes can be achieved with the above base.

Yes, I did this for my DDs birthday. Got an undecorated madeira cake that served 30 and some lovely cake toppers from Etsy. Whole thing was less than £30 and looked great.

Waitrose and M&S have nice birthday cakes

Asda do plain ones where you can get
Some Sort of a picture put on top if you want to - I've bought one of these before and kept it plain, adding my own decorations instead - think they do Madeira and chocolate from memory

I got a fab rainbow cake from Tesco for £12. Served 18. Very moist and tasty. It didn't need any decoration.

I always buy supermarket cakes for my DCs. They don't appreciate homemade ones.

I do this every year! Sainsburys do a perfectly decent round cake, which is iced with plain white icing. I then add my own decoration, to varying degrees of success. The main thing is the DC are always happy with them.

In the past, I have also put together 3 bars of supermarket Madeira cake & iced them with ready-to-roll icing then decorated. These have looked pretty decent imho.

A couple more. Not perfect, but good enough for my boys & not expensive.

@confusedofengland I love that Mr Men cake. Great idea!

I’m thinking of buying one of the rainbow cakes and then buying some cloud toppers.

Would like to do a bit more but don’t really know what.

One year we bought a plain white iced cake for £8, some squeezy icing in a tube and used the icing as glue to stick on some little plastic Paw Patrol figures we already had. Plus a happy birthday candle. Job done!

if you buy plain Madeira loaves they are really easy to carve into a special shape - they don't crumble or fall apart. you can then put on a thin layer of bought pre made buttercream icing and can buy ready made fondant icing and toppers and end up with something that looks pretty impressive for half what you would pay for someone else to put it together.

Do a Cadbury's finger cake? I use Betty Crocker cake mix (chocolate one) and the fudge icing! I'm doing a dinosaur one this year, easy peasy!

Have a look at 'Bullyland' figures. Many cake decorators use those on top.
One of the best I saw was a finger cake, filled with rough, blue buttercream for the ocean and Bullyland Moana figures.

I usually buy sponges from the supermarket, chop them into the shapes I want and then stick the whole lot together with jam and fondant icing. Works a treat. Much less stressful than baking as I am rubbish at sponges.

Indian takeaway or a massive pizza half of which I would save for breakfast tomorrow washed down with gallons of red wine.

Or a platter of cheese, crisps, olives, nuts which I could graze on through the evening watching bridesmaids a trashy film.

Okay, wrong thread.

Yep - this year I bought a personalised M&S chocolate cake and bought some edible sugar Harry Potter cake toppers online

Harry Potter Cake Toppers Edible Icing Personalised Birthday Decorations www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0753FQ462/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_oWLbEb47MRQ6W?tag=mumsnetforu03-21

• I think it looked awesome and couldn’t really tell it was shop bought

I buy the photo cake toppers off amazon to put on cakes - work brilliantly for a couple of pounds, add the fun factor and you can choose whatever text and photo you want!

I make things like this which I do sell (and bake myself) but you could easily recreate with a shop bought cake, especially because shop bought are totally flat on the top which makes the drip easier!

We've used my son's plastic toys to put on top of the cake before. Just had to wash the pokemon afterwards ;-)

I only ever do this and have had some great ones, the most recent was something like this (can't find actual photos on my phone) super easy but looked awesome

Wow these all look great! I’m not sure my creative skills are up to scratch though!