Here’s a quick round up of St. Patrick Day cake ideas for anyone that has a party coming up this weekend or on Tuesday.

Pot o’ Gold at the End of the Rainbow Cake

Irish Treasure Cake Recipe

Pot O’Gold Cake

Leprechaun Hat Cake

For the Star Wars lovers in your family,  The Happy Housewife posted pictures an easy cake decorating idea from the e-book Pretty Cool Cakes.  The cake took under an hour to make and she used canned frosting.  Now that’s a simple cake!

Baked by The Happy Housewife

Thanks to her post and pictures I was eager to see the other cakes in this book, so I downloaded my copy.  At just $4 it’s a steal.  The e-book is well-written and the cakes follow my Simple Cakes Philosophy. Even better, the ideas are all inspired by children.

Check out the original Happy Housewife Star Wars Cake post for more pictures, decorating tips and information.

My son is a Pokemon freak so I was delighted when I found this easy but great Pokemon cake and cupcakes from the  Mom’s Fridge blog.

Pokemon Cake

You’ll need the following ingredients:

• 3 cans frosting (one chocolate, 2 white)
• 2 cake mixes, prepared as directed
• red and white M&Ms.
• icing bag and frosting tip ( #3 tip )
• 1/2 bottle red food coloring

For detailed instructions on how to make this cake visit Mom’s Fridge – Pokemon Cake

If you have an easy cake decorating idea you would like to share, email simplecakes at gmail dot com.

I’m always on the lookout for easy cake decorating ideas and at Parenting.com they have 31 great ideas with step-by-step instructions.

• How to Make a Shark Cake
• How to Make a Lion Cake
• How to Make a Snake Cake
• How to Make a Monkey Cake
• How to Make a Dinosaur Cake
• How to Make a Horse Cake
• How to Make a Cat Cake
• How to Make a Turtle Cake
• How to Make a Dog Cake
• How to Make a Rocket Ship Cake
• How to Make a Train Cake
• How to Make a Bulldozer Cake
• How to Make a Dump Truck Cake
• How to Make a French Fries Cake
• How to Make a Pizza Cake
• How to Make a Castle Cake
• How to Make a Mermaid Cake
• How to Make a Pirate Ship Cake
• How to Make a Dragon Cake
• How to Make a Princess Cake
• How to Make a Soccer Ball Cake
• How to Make a Skateboard Cake
• How to Make a Guitar Cake
• How to Make a Purse Cake
• How to Make a Microphone Cake
• How to Make a Martial Arts Jacket Cake
• How to Make a Football Cake
• How to Make a Basketball Cake
• How to Make a Spider Critters Cake
• How to Make a Ladybug Cake

Click to Enlarge

St. Patrick’s Day is March 17th and this week I’ll be sharing some ideas for tasty treats to celebrate.  Here’s a very quick and simple cake decorated with green sugar and sprinkles.

You will  need  a shamrock cookie cutter for a “stencil”.  If you can’t find find a shamrock cookie cutter, try using a heart shaped cookie cutter to create each leaf of the clover or create your own stencil from cardboard or a file folder.  If you make your own stencil you may need to coat the underside with a thin layer of vegetable shortening so it won’t stick.  Also, I used a small artist paintbrush to spread the crystals, or you could use a toothpick.  I made a 8 in. round cake, but you could stencil the clover(s) on any size or shape cake.

I thought confetti cake would be a good choice since rainbows are associated with the holiday.  I went with a white icing, green dessert crystals and shamrock sprinkles.

After icing the cake smooth I refridgerated it for 20 minutes to make sure frosting would be firm.  Then I placed the cookie cutter in the center of the cake and poured the green sugar crystals into the center.  Think less is more when you start this process because if you end up with too many crystals they will pour over when you lift your cookie cutter.

Using a clean dry paintbrush or toothpick, gently spread the crystals from the middle towards the edge of the cookie cutter.  When you lift your stencil you will have a sugary sweet shamrock!

To complete the cake I sprinkled sugar around the top edge and poured the shamrock sprinkles around the bottom edge.  To create a cleaner edge, I slid my icing spatula under the sprinkles, pressed them into the base of the cake and then brushed away the excess.

I hope you liked this easy to make cake and it inspires you to come up with your own simple cake decorating ideas!

Hobnails

You will want to use a lot of light frosting for this.  Press the back of a spoon into the frosting, twist and lift to make swirls.  Experiment with different size spoons.  With a large wooded spoon you can make make large tear shaped petals.   I think that this technique works great when embellishing with fruit and flowers.

ZigZags

A decorater’s comb makes for quick work and looks nice for cake sides.  However you can get a similar effect with a fork.

Embossing

When your icing is dry to the touch, place a textured paper towel on your cake and apply gentle pressure.  When you lift the paper towel the design will be left on the cake.  This paper towel techique is also a very popular method to smooth buttercream icing.

This cake is an example of how you can create something unique and special without having any baking or decorating skills at all.

For my son’s 5th Birthday party I baked a large chocolate sheet cake and created a Spongebob SquarePants scene for him using Crayola’s Model Magic clay to make the Pineapple and jellyfish. The characters are from the top of special edition PlayDoh cans and the “sand” is crushed graham crackers.

SpongeBob Cake for Cameron

Everyone complimented me on how the cake looked, but close friends and family confided that the cake itself was pretty dry and bland. I realized that I could have saved myself a lot of time if I would have just ordered the cake from my grocery store and added the models before the party.

So keep in mind that toys and other non-edible items can be incorporated into your cake design. Just make sure that your material are non-toxic.

Sunday is fast approaching and I think I’m going to make a cake for the big game.

Here are some links I’ve visited for inspiration:

Sweet Endings – Football Cake 

Superbowl Cake from all recipes 

That Little Something Special football cake 

and finally a great post from Eat the Football with not just cake ideas, but suggestions for all your snackage!

I hope to make the cake a day ahead of time and post pictures before the game.

This cake is much easier to make than it looks!

Select your cake pans

You will need at least four, maybe five cake pans. I used a 9 in., 8 in., and two smaller baking dishes. However, the size of your cake will vary depending on how many people you need to serve, or what cake pans you actually have! You can stack your pans upside down to get an idea of the shape.

Alternatively, you could use the same size pans and layer them, then carve out the shape. That’s a lot of wasted cake batter though.

Carve out the shape

For tips on cake baking you can visit my Preparing to Decorate Your Cake series. Otherwise, I’ll assume you know enough to get on with the decorating! I would like to stress that leveling your layers is important. Also, I carved the shape after I had placed my cake on the cakeboard (a strong plastic serving plate covered with aluminum foil and turned upside down).

Have a picture of a Hershey Kiss or a real on on hand to use as a guide for carving. Make sure you have a long, sharp, serrated knife and start off slowly cutting just a little at a time. Remember you can always slice more off, but it’s hard to put it back on.

Ice it!

As you can see, it starts out looking pretty sloppy. The great thing about a giant Hershey Kiss though, is that it has to be chocolate! Chocolate cake, chocolate icing, so you don’t have to worry so much about a few stray crumbs mixed in with the icing.

Read my tips on icing cakes if you haven’t already. I placed this in the freezer for about an hour before I began icing it because I wanted as smooth a surface as possible.  You will want to be very generous with the amount of icing you use. The very top of the kiss is completely built up with icing.

Finishing touches

What really sells this cake is the “wrapping”. The birthday message was printed out landscape on regular paper and then cut. The wrapper is two sheets of aluminum foil taped together. You could probably use silver foil wrapping paper as well. I crumbled the aluminum foil and then smoothed it out to give it a more authentic look.

I found a great article called Easy Decorating Tips for the Decorating Impaired by Eisla Sebastian.

Her four tips are:

1. Use Premixed Frostings
2. Use Edible Flowers
3. Use Toys
4. Use Pre-Made Frosting Inserts

You can read the whole article here.