A Christmas Cake Idea

Since we're in the Christmas season, I thought it's a good time to share a Christmas cake idea.  It's another fun novelty cake design that is easy to make and gives great enjoyment to the receiver (or entire party!).  I was directing a Christmas play and the main actor's birthday happened during our rehearsal time. The mom in me wanted to do a birthday cake for him; the artist in me wanted to combine the birthday cake with the theme of Christmas and the play--Christmas trees featured in the play.  So here's a birthday cake idea for all those December babies, or just a fun novelty cake idea for the Christmas season!

I have a penchant for 3-D cakes.  Making a Christmas tree cake in the flat 2-dimensional design would have been easy, but I yearned for something more substantial.  Here's the Christmas tree cake picture:

The actual cake is easy to put together.  It is 5 layers of cake - pick your flavor!  I used chocolate and vanilla cakes.

To make and assemble:
1.  Use 2 cake recipes for round cakes.  Bake the cake in round pans of decreasing size.  The top portion of cake is cupcake size.

2.  When the cakes are cooled, stack them on top of each other in decreasing size, with jam or frosting between each layer.  Use a bamboo skewer  down the centre to prevent the cakes from sliding.

3.  Crumb frost the stacked cakes if desired.

4.  Cut triangles out of each layer, alternating position, so that the "branches" come to a point.

5.  Use green-tinted buttercream frosting and pipe onto the cake with a star-tipped decorating tip.  Pipe in fairly short ribbons.  Start at the bottom of the cake and move upward by layer, letting each layer overlap the layer below.

6.  Decorate the cake with multi-colored candies, such as Skittles, Smarties, Rockets or M&Ms.  Gold and silver decorating balls work well too.  If you use a dark green food coloring, you can sift powdered sugar (icing powder) over the tree to look like snow in a forest.

7.  Cut leftover pieces of cake into cubes and frost with any color frosting (I used red) and decorate as presents.  I used Skittles for ribbons.

That's it!

But if you want more Christmas cake design ideas, check out the cake molds that are available.  I saw one that bakes the cake in two halves, then can be fitted together to make a 3-D Christmas tree cake.  Cool!


And I just have to put this link in as well for a fun looking gingerbread and Christmas tree mini pan!  There are too many fun cake decorating ideas and tools out there—I want them all!  Maybe I should open up a cake and cookie shop! The child in me wants all these fun toys for cake designs!  And novelty cakes (and cookies!) speak to the child in all of us, don't they?