By Melissa Grant
The birthday cake is a significant part of a child’s birthday celebration.
Every child loves being presented with a birthday cake, and blowing out the candles signifies the coming year in their life.
If you think back to your own birthday celebrations as a child, you’re likely to remember some of the cakes you enjoyed – number shaped cakes, cakes inspired by the Women’s Weekly and other sweet-themed creations.
Often a lot of love goes into a birthday cake, with parents spending hours baking and decorating or forking out considerable cash for something made to order.
These days, mums and dads are finding plenty of cake inspiration online, including on Pinterest and social media sites.
We recently put out a call to our readers to see what birthday cakes they have been whipping up.
Olivia, from Berwick, loves making birthday cakes for her two boys.
“I’m a very passionate baker; one of my favourite things is baking and creating for my little family,” she said.
“My mum is a wonderful baker and my late and beautiful Grandmother was too as was my Great Grandmother. I come from a line of extraordinary women.”
Fireman Sam and Blaze and the Monster Machines inspired the cakes she baked for her son Michael’s fourth birthday.
Michael’s Fireman Sam torte was a chantilly sponge with a citrus mascarpone cream, while his second cake was chocolate mud with a vanilla creme patissiere filling and Blaze decorations on top.
For her younger son, Daniel, she made an impressive croquembouche – a French creation consisting of choux pastry puffs piled into a cone and bound with threads of caramel.
The cake for his second celebration, was a traditional chocolate mud with a Lindt ganache and farm animal toppers she created.
Perhaps the most popular themed cakes at the moment are Bluey and Frozen.
Jen from Narre Warren South used Pinterest to inspire the Frozen cake she recently created for her daughter’s third birthday.
“I followed a recipe to bake it, but the decorating I just made up based on Pinterest inspo,” she said.
Nat, of Pakenham, recently baked a Bluey inspired cake for her daughter Olivia.
“She turned 5 and is Bluey obsessed,” Nat said.
“I didn’t copy anything – I just kinda went with an idea I had and built on it.”
“This cake was nothing fancy, just a fun cake that my daughter loved.”
