quick birthday cake ideas for girls

[thirtysomething]

Hi-anyone know any simple ideas for a birthday cake (using shop-bought cake bits if poss!) I am pretty useless at cake decoration but once saw a fab cake made from some 30-minute cake book and my dd loved it - she'll be 3 soon and I'd love to make something girlie and pink eg a castle or a little house, although no doubt I'll end up just nipping to Sainsbury's in desperation when my attempt fails miserably!!

In all honesty, you can make something completely girly with zero effort. Pink icing, little plastic ballerina candle-holders, pink and white letters to say your dd's name or whatever (bought in any supermarket), gold candles (ditto), a few jelly tots round the edge and bob's your uncle! I'm sure she'll be thrilled whatever you make, and the beauty of little girl's cakes is you can go completely OTT!

Aaargh, that should of course be little girls' cakes, before the apostrophe police notice!

I made a dead easy fairy garden-made traybake type flat cake (small roasting tin) covered with green tinted buttercream, sprinkled over green dessicated coconut (grass) made pond out of ready roll icing coloured blue, little path/rocks from brown ready roll icing, lots of those little icing flowers you buy ready made and a few of those little china fairies from cheap shop. It went with the fairy party theme and was so easy-dd loved it.

My friend made a great Cinderella cake for her dd's 3rd birthday - she made a sponge in a pudding basin, cut a hole in the middle, plonked in a Barbie doll and draped ready-made fondant icing round to cover the skirt. Rather reminiscent of my granny's loo roll holder, but simple, very pretty and the girls all loved it.

I'd recommend a book to anyone who wants ideas for fab childrens bday cakes. It's called "Kids' Birthday Cakes" from the Australian Womens weekly cookbooks series. I bought it in Borders for £5.99 and it has 108 different cakes. Everything from wizards hats to toadstools,frogs, rainbows... The list is endless. They even supply the templates to cut your cake round!

Posey ... I have that book ... Australian Women's Weekly is the biz when it comes to cook books ...
They give a fool proof recipe for the cake and icing ... but you can buy ready made stuff if you want and give pictures on how to cut up the cake into the bits you need to stick together to make the train/dolly/castle/pirate ship ....
A 'must have' book on your recipe book shelf!!

Im very good at cake decoration and could send you something to sit on top of a cake if you want

A large pile of fairy cakes. Go to a cake decorating shop where you can get edible glitter, silver leaf etc and decorate the cakes (shop bought if you like!). Arrange them in a large cone shaped pile on a plate and wrap ribbon etc round. No faffing about at cake cutting time with this one either, just pick off the individual cakes. A friend had this as their "wedding" cake when they had a blessing and it looked fantastic. Theirs used about 200 fairy cakes and was (IIRK) about 2 feet tall!!

Nigella does the barbie doll cake and says that the kids can decorate it with loads of sweets, which I was going to do as it sounds easy but stunning, but my 3 yr old wanted a hedgehog cake just like her brother had 10 days before. I was sick of the sight of chocolate frosting and choccy buttons for spikes. Luckily its only once a year because I ended up eating most of them!

Posey - I bought that book too from Borders! I made the pink crown for dd's 3rd birthday - very easy to make although I had to hire a large square tin. Made a flatish choc sponge cake and cut into 2-D crown shape - decorated with pink icing and lots of sweets for jewels - dd loved it!

I made, with a little help from talented parents, the carousel for dd's 6th birthday. She was SOOOO proud of it. Still spends ages looking through the book and has chosen which cakes she and baby brother will have for every bday for next 10 years!

thank you everyone - some great ideas and sounds like some of you are amazingly competent in the cake department! I think I may well attempt the Cinderella idea as it's a Princess themed party and she's just sooo into pink!!

I made a lovely tea time cake for my daughter's tea party. Victoria sponge, covered in white ready roll fondant like a tablecloth - I used pink food colouring and a cocktail stick to make a pattern on the table cloth. I topped it with a tiny fairy cake decorated to look like a birthday cake, and a dolls house tea set, then sat her barbies around it on stools - really really easy and quite effective if i do say so myself!

My niece has just turned three and like your daughter is very into pink at the mo. My SIL made three circular cakes each slighly smaller than the last, put them on top of each other with a layer of jam to keep them together and covered the whole thing in pink butter icing. She put a silver cone on the top to be the turret and she had the most gorgeous pink fairytale castle. A few icing windows and some silver sugar balls to decorate, ice on your daughter's name and hey presto the cleverest Mummy in the world!! You could easily buy 3 round cakes if you're really hopeless at baking like me!!

I made a princess castle for my dds last bd, which was dead easy and used shop bought cakes. Basically, get 2 batenburg cakes and 2 swiss rolls. Place battenburgs on cake base (i took marzipan off as dd didn't like it) then cut swiss rolls in half and stand upright at each corner. Then cover the whole lot with pink butter cream. Oh, I forgot, we used 4 ice cream cornets and covered them in pink butter cream and rolled them in 100/1000's and stuck them on top of the swiss rolls. Then decorate to your hearts content. It was really easy and looked great, fed 22 kids, with left-overs and was sooo cheap. Have fun.

Can I recommend the train cake in the australian Women's weekly book to anyone else with a 3 yo boy. Just did it for birthday of son - much easier than you would think and was enormous hit with son and friends, have been feeling pleased with self ever since. some of the decoration ideas in the book are a bit 70s but easy to update..