Mini Birthday Cake

Random House

If the Cat in the Hat were a baker, this is what his specialty might look like. It is probably our most popular cake—we make more than 100 a week in two different sizes—and it has become our signature design. If you prefer not to work with as many colors as we show here, try some of these alternatives: a glazed background, tone on tone (such as light pink to dark pink), or all white.

ingredients

Cake: one 10-inch round cake of your choice (we recommend Chocolate Butter Cake, see below)
Filling: 6 cups of whipped cream (we usually mix in 20 crushed chocolate sandwich cookies such as Oreos)
Icing: Buttercream frosting of your choice
Decoration: 1 to 2 cups white wafer chocolate to make assorted chocolate candles
Colors: Teal, green, yellow, blue, violet, neon pink, and orange liquid gel colors and neon bright pink, green, blue, or violet candy colors (plus yellow)
Tips: #102 and #104 petal tip, #18 and #199 star tip, and #4 round tip

directions

1
Bake the cake and let it cool completely. Prepare the filling and icing. Fill and crumb coat the cake. Chill the filled cake.
2
Melt 1 to 2 cups of white wafer chocolate. Set aside 1/4 cup of melted chocolate. Tint the chocolate with your choice of candy color. Pour the chocolate into a pastry cone and cut a medium-size hole. On a sheet pan lined with parchment paper pipe out as many 5-inch candles as you will need. They should be at least 1/4 inch wide and 1/8 inch thick. Set aside to harden.
3
Tint the reserved chocolate yellow. Pour the chocolate into a pastry cone and cut a medium-size hole. When the candles are hard, flip them over and pipe yellow chocolate flames on their tips.
4
Prepare the colored buttercream of your choice; we used 2 1/4 cups purple, 3/4 cup orange, 3/4-cup lime green, 1/4 cup teal, 1/4-cup neon pink, 1/4-cup blue, and 1/4 cup yellow.
5
Ice the cake with purple buttercream or the base color of your choice. Adhere the cardboard round supporting the cake to your base.
6
Place the orange buttercream in a pastry bag with a coupler, and with a petal tip pipe or a Ruffled Ribbon Border around the bottom edge.
7
Place the yellow or blue buttercream in a pastry bag with a coupler. Pipe a Bead Border above the Ruffled Ribbon Border: With the same tip, pipe yellow linear swags. Place the lime-green buttercream in a pastry bag with a coupler; and with a star tip pipe lime-green Spiral Swags using the swag lines as a guide. With the same tip, pipe an evenly spaced ring of rosettes around the outer edge of the cake top. There should be the same number of rosettes as there are candles.
8
Place the teal buttercream in a pastry bag with a coupler, and with a star tip pipe a shell border around the top edge.
9
Stick the chocolate candles into the rosettes so the flat sides face the front, pressing them halfway into the cake.
10
Place the neon pink in a pastry bag with a coupler, and with a petal tip pipe bows where the swags meet.