To decorate a pre iced cake for dds 16th and refuse to pay £80 for a themed cake?!

[Dewdrops1]

So it’s dd’s 16th birthday and quotes on birthday cakes coming in at £80 or there about 😳 completely appreciate time and cost involved but it’s just out of my price range (and I’ve left it too late!)

So…..do you think I’d be able to decorate a pre iced shop cake and make it look acceptable (I’m not very good at baking so unable to make own!)?

any ideas on how I’d go about doing this in 2 days and pass it off as a ‘professional’ looking cake😂 was thinking black/gold decoration and possibly getting two different size cakes to put on top of each other, no idea how I’d go about doing that mind!

Honest opinions greatly appreciated.

Unless you're good at playdough etc it won't look professional. You're best off just embracing that it will look a bit shit but made with love.

Get a nicely decorated supermarket cake and add to it with toppers, flowers, whatever. I bet your DD will love it anyway but also think it's just cake!

Honestly if you can't bake a cake you're unlikely to be competent at decorating one.

I appreciate it's a large cost but sometimes it's worth paying for someone else to do it so it's done properly.

The reason they’re expensive is that they take time and skill. If anyone could do it with YouTube and some pre-made icing then there wouldn’t be a market for custom cakes.

Just get a nice cake from M&S or Waitrose - it will look better than what you can manage.

Yep. Loads of suitable pre-made decorative cake toppers online. Bit of gold edible glitter. M and S used to do quite good cakes.

And £80 is cheap

Just go for a supermarket one that's already nicely decorated? Way cheaper than £80.

I did a 12 month cake decorating course … just about scraped a pass, not as easy as you might think

What are you looking to do

Btw, DD is 18 in a couple of week, I have ordered a big Colin the Caterpillar from M&S

Can you get a naked cake or a plain cake from M&S etc and then add as others have said fresh flowers/a nice cake topper etc to jazz it up a bit, will look pretty and doesn’t require any actual decorating skill?

Agree with @Cavalierchaos - Waitrose and M&S do nice ones for £30/40 which can be personalised. Nice tasting cake too!

That's a good idea actually

Cakes like these are the easiest to pull off. Buy a bunch of fancy chocolates and stick them to the top with icing. Buy a big glittery ‘sweet 16’ topper for the top.

To stack a cake on top of another, insert wooden dowels or straws into the bottom layer for support, in the position where the top cake will sit. Construct this in situ/at the venue and not before transporting it.

Yeah get a supermarket cake and then a cake topper online in a colour/style/theme she'll like. If you've never tried decorating a cake before, odds are you won't be any good at it!

I agree if you can’t even bake a cake, you won’t be able to decorate one either. Plus buying a cake that is already iced and then buying decorations will be almost as expensive as just ordering a cake. You might save £10 for what will look pretty horrible. Not worth it for a milestone 16th birthday.

Can't you just buy one (or two) of the large supermarket decorated celebration cakes. Sainsbury does a loaded lemon cake and a large chocolate cake that are both delicious. Just add birthday candles and maybe a "sixteen" cake topper and you are sorted.

I'd buy the two tier naked cake from M&S and put some flowers/fresh fruit and a nice cake topper on there. £50 well spent!

We often do that - buy a cake and decorate it ourselves. I'm most definitely not even remotely professional or even particularly competent 😂 But the results have been fine! I just get a fun little piping shape thingie and go for it, then cover up any flaws with sprinkles or strawberries 😂 I bought a giant cupcake from Tesco (I think!) once which looked cool when decorated.

I agree, don't try to make it look professional, as it probably won't.

If you can get hold of some edible flowers (either organically grown in your own garden, from a specialist supplier or sometimes from the salad section of M&S or Waitrose) you can use them to decorate a plain iced cake very beautifully with little skill required. They work well with tall, elegant candles.

Another easy option is to buy some mini macarons or coloured meringues and use them to decorate a plain iced cake, together with berries, e.g. blueberries, raspberries and chocolate-dipped strawberries.

Basically don't attempt anything with fondant unless you are either already experienced or have a lot of time and patience. Good luck!

Another one here to recommend a naked cake from the M&S website and add some flowers etc

For my sons 16th, I bought a large chocolate fudge cake from Booker cash & carry and a few boxes of profiteroles. I stacked the profiteroles on top of the cake, drizzled with chocolate sauce, edible gold glitter & finished with a 16th birthday topper.
I never tried passing it off as a professional cake as I didn't feel the need; I made it like this as he absolutely adores profiteroles. It did look sufficiently "special" though

You can get personalised toppers which are not expensive to add to shop brought cake.

A simply decorated supermarket cake is fine! Or could you let DD and her friends decorate a plain iced cake as part of the party? My parents did this for my 17th and it went down really well, although the idea was to sign/write on it in icing and attempt to draw pictures rather than make it pretty!

That’s such a fun idea!

OMG yes to whoever said add some mini macarons 👏

just wanted to say, don’t get a Sainsbury’s cake! Every time I’ve got a birthday cake from there it’s been so artificially sweet, yeah not enjoyed them at all, go M&S they’re about the same price for a standard cake but for a naked cake would be a bit more but would obviously look really good once some flowers etc added xx

For DD's 16th I bought 3 chocolate cakes - and stuck them on eachother the top tier was a smaller one
Then a fancy topper and job done!
It looked good!