can you inspire me re decorating a non-chocolate non-coloured birthday cake?

[hatwoman]

I have a dd that doesn;t like chocolate, a guest with a colouring allergy and a personal aversion to doing anything with fondant icing (can look amazing but too difficult). dd likes white chocolate, guest can have smarties...but I can't find any particularly lovely inspiring pictures. any ideas? I thank you.

oh and I have another dd who claims not to like butter icing. I'm a bit suspicious of this claim but she's adamant.

Carrot cake with cream cheese frosting.

tbh comeOveneer I'm thinking more about looks...I'll probably do a plain sponge but need inspiration to make it look lovely. google threw up this but I think it's perhaps beyond available time and talent

Is it a birthday cake/for who/what do they like (ie theme wise)?

yes it's a birthday cake for dd - 7. for an Abba party....(but no I'm not doing an Abba cake...) in years gone by I've done quite pretty ones with coloured fondant flowers or similar - but it's such a time consuming pita I'm thinking more along the lines of something simple to do but effective...a decorative pile of rolos...perhaps (the dislike of chocolate only extends as far as not having it covered in chocolate icing.)

did you lok at that website? isn;t it jaw-droppingly good? (though I have to question the sanity of anyone who has a cake like that for a first birthday party...)

saw a simple one last week, butter icing then a bag of dolly mixtures spread over the top, kids thought it looked great

Outline "7" in smarties, or rolos or whatever? Make cake in the shape of a 7 (I cut a 2 last year out of a rectangle cake, you don't need a mould necessarily).

For my dds birthdy my Mum and I bought a pretty big wicker basket and filled it with many many cup cakes. Diferent sizes same cake - but I suppose you could do different flavours for everyones tastes. We put candles on the top ones and pretty countryside flowers in the corner of the basket.

It looked lovely!!!

We got the cupcake recipes from here....

www.bbcgoodfood.com/search.do;jsessionid=3A3225B74F1A89DBCE0525A79BA8AAEA?keywords=cup+cakes&filterI tem=&filterItem=&filterItem=&filterItem=&filterItem=&filterItem=&filterItem=&filterItem=&filterItem= &filterItem=&x=25&y=12

Hope this is of help...

• Abba-y Birthday to your dd!!!!

Oooooops - lots of them have colourings - and chocolate but you see the idea.... and I think you could easily find lots of fruiy recipes without colouring.

We also had big bowls of strawberries to offer when we served the cakes - now they went down very well too!!!

I'm having a bit of a cup-cake thing at the moment - we made some last weekend, decorated with various sweets from the sweet shop down the road that sells stuff in jars, and they looked really great. so, although it might be slight overkill on the sponge front I'm going to make some for the party, as well as a cake.

Yes it is a great site, I have used it for inspiration before (do agree overkill for a first birthday).

If you want some cucake inspiration, look at the piccies on my profile.

www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/3346/easter-muffins

www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/9292/frosted-lemon-fairy-cakes

www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/8349/bbc-children-in-need-cupcakes (the raspberry ones)

www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/8087/pear-and-toffee-muffins wih a little icing sugar sprinkled on the top maybe?

• Here are some non choc non colour recipes that I am sure most people would fight for and the fact they are in a pretty basket and little, cute and rustic means decoration can be quite relaxed. Which I think is really nice.

I'd forgotten your status as mn resident cake decorator magnifique...would you like to pop over and do dd's for me....?

Sorry I keep x-posting lately!!!!

Cupcakes and birthday cake!!!!

Hello ComeOveneer - hows seting up your cake business going?

This cake looks nice and you could use smarties instead of the sweets they have used.

Go to Waitrose and pick up their catalogue re cakes. And then steal some ideas from there? That's what I did last weekend to a very positive responce