Non professional cake makers - what's the best (easiest) novelty cake you have ever made?

[Streatfeild]

Hi all, I am tasked with making a novelty cake for my mum's big birthday - a party with about 100 people but the cake is for candles and ooohs and aaaahs and fun, not for feeding people per se, as there will be other cakes too. So I don't need to worry about making it huge.

I am a moderately competent cake maker, though not big on faffing with sugar paste etc. Also not a purist - I don't need to decor to all be edible.

I have of course looked online and in books, but I would love to know which novelty cakes you have made have been hits? And the holy grail - a hit, and easy enough to make and transport.

Thank you!

All of my novelty cakes have been for my dc, Christmas or Easter!
I’ve done an easy butterfly https://helloyummy.co/easy-butterfly-cake/
And this ice cream themed cake https://www.sainsburysmagazine.co.uk/recipes/cakes/neapolitan-ice-cream-cake

The very easiest high impact cake I made was a flowerpot cake.

Made 2 cakes, one in my biggest Pyrex bowl and one 8 inch circular cake. Stacked the circular cake on top of the Pyrex bowl cake to make the flower pot. Used dowels to secure it. Covered the whole thing in chocolate fondant icing.

Made a lot of very simple sugar paste flowers, leaves, butterflies and bees on wires. Stuck them in the top with a massive number candle.

If you don't want to make the sugar paste flowers etc. instead of making the 8 inch circular cake, you can just put the 8 inch cake tin on top of the Pyrex cake. Fill the cake tin with water soaked oasis (So long as the tin doesn't have a loose bottom and water would leak out) Cover the outside of the cake tin in matching chocolate fondant so it looks like cake. Arrange real flowers in the oasis inside the cake tin

I made a dinosaur cake out of 2 rounds of sponge cake. One was the body, the other I cut a smaller circle out of the middle and that was the head and then the ring around leftover bit got cut into 2 feet and a tail. I slapped some basic icing on it as a glue layer and then covered it in desiccated coconut that I had shaken in a freezer bag with some green food colouring. Then a sweetie for the eye and a smile.

i dont know if it would work for 100 adults though 😂

I've done an excellent Lego construction site but I don't think Mum will be impressed!

I did a space cake once. Which was very very very dark grey icing with white chocolate stars.

Oh and the Australian women's weekly train cake is brilliant and actually easy. You can also use your mum's favorites biscuits, lollies etc.

https://www.womensweeklyfood.com.au/recipe/baking/choo-choo-train-birthday-cake-26787/

You can do the cakes in a variety of flavours too.

Plain round sponge cake (or two if you like, stacked and filled with buttercream or jam) fondant icing to cover top and sides of the cake, then a clown face drawn on with coloured icing pens and/or chocoate buttons/jelly sweets for eyes and mouth. Bits of coloured fondant icing rolled into wriggly worm shapes for hair and attached to top of cake on one side. .
DS loved it -- but he was only two or three at the time, older children might not be so impressed.🤗

I made an excellent Lego ninjago cake -
made a depression chocolate cake and then followed a you tube video on how to dress it up with some rolled red icing to make it look like the head of the red ninja.

very impressive.
For a 6yo
not sure your mum would be as impressed!!

This one

cat cake - make 3 round cakes. cut one down to get the face and the tail. stack them up. ice with lots of butter-cream.

the eyes are smarties + icing pen.

my 16yr old did this one.

Probably the barrel cake I made for my sons 18th. You could do something similar with a bottle of procecco etc. The 'ice' is lumps of sugar you can buy I'm Asian grocery shops.

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What do you mean by 'novelty' - generally would involve the recipient's interests.

For example, for a 60yo I might go to something like this (piped flowers), but I wouldn't call it 'novelty'.

Novelty would be something like this Indiana Jones cake which is probably one of the easiest cakes I've made. PP's suggestion of a flower pot would be easy for the same reason - it's just a big cake, bit of carving, nothing too fiddly (if you source a non-fiddly way of making flowers!)

The longest and most time consuming and hardest are the ones with tiny details. Think big scale for everything and should be nice and quick and easy!

ETA - oh and a bonus choc cake there for you 😁 photos should show imminently.

Is cost an issue? I have personally made novelty cakes but I have time to mess around with this sort of thing but if you want a wow cake then have a look on Etsy at their edible cake wraps. There are two types, one is wafer and the more expensive and beautiful ones are fondant ones. Have a look here at a video of them applying the wrap. Then go onto Etsy and look for them. There are also embellishments you can add like edible cake flowers and acrylic personalised Happy Birthday signs too.

Not sure the choo choo train is the most appropriate for a mum's big birthday but I used to adore the book that this cake came from! I saw this week that the Australian Mint are bringing out coins with the cakes on to commemorate the book

Just to add - I mentioned piped flowers because they're soooooo much quicker than sugar flowers. And edible. Depends what your piping is like though of course. I'd vote a flower pot with non-edible flowers if you can't make them yourself, but obviously make sure you're not just sticking them into the cake, got to use posy pics or cover the stems in something food safe.

I love a gardening or sewing box cake but they're not impactful or easy - after all that detailed work, you've got to spend time looking closely at it to take it all in, so probably not the impact you're after.

A lot of kitchen places loan out tins to make life easier
if your mum is a significant age you could get tins to make the cake then ice it there are loads of sugar paste items you can buy flowers animals etc ie 70 80 etc
one I liked was a book shaped cake you could put your mums name on one side birthday date on the other side or you could get a photograph topper on the other side of her

I dabble in a bit of cake making and while I've never made anything bake-off worthy and they all have an obvious home-made look the recipient has always been grateful... by far the easiest thing to do (if you don't mind it being slightly 'cheating' ) is to purchase cake toppers online (Etsy has a lot of sellers or just google customisable cake toppers). You can get edible or non edible ones and you can get virtually anything made into a topper - a photo, things related to a hobby or favourite TV programme or film, models of pets or grandchildren or flowers or whatever she likes. Plus you can get sugar letters to spell out her name or age or a slogan, and happy birthday banners or so on. Then all you have to do is make your cake(s) - (bonus if it's not the main dessert you can prioritise stablility over texture), ice with smoothed buttercream or fondant icing, then glue on your toppers using a bit of sugar glue.

Or if you don't want to go down the topper route I have had some success making animal cakes by cutting a loaf tin cake down to size/shape, icing with coloured buttercream fluffed to look like fur, then adding fondant eyes, ears etc. Like this Guinea pig one (not mine but I achieved similar with very little skill ).

Pinata cake. Make 3 layers of a victoria sponge (vanilla/chocolate/other). Cut a circle out of the bottom two. Layer together the bottom two with ganache/icing/jam then fill the hole with sweets that have a hard sugar shell (smarties/minstrels). Top with the un-holed sponge and ice/decorate/ganache. When you take the first slice out, all the sweets pour out.

Loving all of these!

She’s not really a hobby person, so nothing immediate springs to mind. But some fab ideas here to ponder

Treasure chest (for children’s pirate party though!) Bake sponge in loaf tin, cover in light brown buttercream run through with a fork for wood effect, rolled-out icing “leather” straps and rivets, icing lock. Slice top through, wedge open with buttercream and stick Haribo rings, sweetie necklaces, chocolate coins, wine gums etc in to overflow, onto “sandy” base of brown sugar. I added meringue “bones” but target audience was six-year-old boys 😂 (who are now 26).
Happy birthday to mummy Streatfeild!

Made Thomas the tank engine using a cleaned out can, and slabs of Madeira cake. Though cuter was a hedgehog cooked in an oval mould, butter cream and tons of chocolate buttons and jelly tot eyes. Really simple no pipe work

Hmmm....I think my best ones were a lemur and a dragon. Making the lemur's tail out of chocolate mini rolls laid end to end and its eyes out of the yellow liquorice allsorts were a masterstroke, if I say so myself. I have made many other novelty cakes for the DC, but they are of course based on things they like. DS2 will be on school camp by the seaside for his 10th birthday and his teacher has agreed to transport a cake for him, so am currently considering a seagull cake large enough for 30 😆

So....what does your mum like??

You can have cake toppers printed on icing, have any photo/message included or choose a specific theme. You can get them on Amazon.
Then just bake a round cake and ice the sides. Dead easy.

This sort of thing:
https://amzn.eu/d/7rw4y0x

I have made Nigellas malteser cake in the past.
Then butter iced it and added choc fingers around the edge.

Filled the middle with maltesers and wrapped a nice coloured ribbon round it.

Very simple but looked great!
www.nigella.com/recipes/chocolate-malteser-cake