Cake performance anxiety, please advise!

[MamaHobgoblin]

Bit of a Bunty-esque one here.

My NCT group are having a '6 month party' for our DC. (yes, I know. They are all PFBs!) DHs and in some cases, grandparents are all coming. I volunteered to make the Cake because I sort of like faffing about in that way. And now I have performance anxiety, coupled with stunted imagination and I don't know what to doooo!

Am planning on using Nigella's 'buttermilk birthday cake' recipe from Domestic Goddess book, haven't used before. Has anyone tried this? And for someone who used to enjoy 'recreational baking' (ie: fannying about with icing, edible decorations, etc) I haven't got a clue what to do with it once it's done. It's a sponge sandwich, so I think the inside is going to be buttercream. But what about the top? Buttercream too? Am I going to attempt some sort of, god help us, Theme? Or should I just fling silver balls at it and hope for the best? Advice please!

Just make an ordinary all in one recipe in a roasting tin, cut out a large 1 and decorate with some melted chocolate icing and then top with maltesesers, milky stars and sparkle white choc buttons in diagonal lines across cake. Will look stunning and take 40 minutes. Life is too short

buttermilk birthday cake works fine, but TBH at 6 months the cake is for adults, so make a gooey chocolatey one instead - perhaps a really big one and then cut it in half and sandwich it so that ir is half a cake for their half birthdays?

OOh, I like the half cake for half a birthday! Thanks, will ponder on.

For dd's first bday I did a "Sweetie Mountain" cake

I made 3 cakes of different sizes and sandwiched them together and scultpted to a dome shape
Then covered the whole thing in white icing and stuck sweets all over it (in rows, so bottom row licquorice allsorts, next row smarties, next row jelly beans etc)
Then stuck a few sparklers in - they adore sparklers when little!

I do have some cake sparklers! Was planning to use them to avoid candles (who blows them out? and babies won't notice weeny candles). Love the idea of sweetie mountain, may use for ds when he reaches a full single figure!