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!

Chocolate explosion cake. Make
a chocolate cake. Buy a bunch of different chocolate candy, focus on different lengths, shapes, and textures. Shove candy into top of cake. extra points for doing a chocolate ganache that drips down the sides before adding the candy on top.

you don’t have to worry about frosting it nicely because it all gets hidden.

Got you covered; I'm an amateur cake maker but I've been told many times I should go pro. You can't go wrong with a caterpillar or a hedgehog.

Easiest one is the Barbie one where you bake a round deep base/2 layers and literally shove a whole Barbie in the middle then trim and ice it so the cake is her big flouncy skirt,

You could make it a little crown for her and it could be a birthday queen for a queen???

Search for Barbie cake. They look amazing and super easy

Anti gravity cake - you can make it feed as many as you like by adding layers. Put dowels between layers, and stick a bendy straw onto a skewer at an angle and stick maltesers together with melted chocolate. It takes A LOT of chocolate fingers round the edge - I think this one was 5 boxes, but is still talked about years later.

Or one I did for my mum's 90th - I used four different shades of buttercream, but really simple to swirl. Again, make as big as you like - this one was raspberry ripple sponge with a whole jar of jam and a bit of buttercream in the middle😋

For ds' 7th birthday (and for 20 small boys), a large square chocolate cake.

A standard chocolate sponge, triple normal quantity, with ripply blue icing, a lego wind surfer, and a rainbow of tiny sugar discs which ran down the sides of the cake and across the cake board.

The filling was home made raspberry jam. There was none left 😋