Birthday cake cheating

I do not love baking. After a few years of feeling guilty for being so unenthusiastic in the birthday cake domain of life, I learned to cheat. My new rules are simple:

1. Buy a cake that people would like to eat.
2. If necessary, ice with pre-made icing.
3. Dump a whole of of visually exciting stuff on top.

So, here are a few birthday cakes from the last couple of years.

All the cakes have been simple, delicious, low cost cakes bought from a bakery nearby. Lamington cake, butterscotch cake, apple tea cake, red velvet cake, mud cake, Jam and cream sponge. Anything.

A tower of bakery cakes, stacked and secured with bamboo skewers.

Pre-made icing with food colouring added.

Cake mountain iced (note the rugged waterfall spilling down the side!).

A pile of treasure chocolates on top for the toy dragon (seen here from behind) to sit on. That is what dragons do, after all.

After cutting, kids just chose their preferred layer of cake (as opposed to having a tall skinny piece of three types of cake).

This was a plain, iced bakery cake.

Roses from our garden arranged on top.

Old tea cup and saucer, with toy bear seated inside.

A few silver cachous scattered for sparkle.

Our trusty bakery had this one decorated already. 

I added the butterfly and the silk petals (from the discount store)

Yes, this was excessive! I bought the top three layers from the supermarket (oh, red velvet cake is delicious!), Again, all held together with skewers.

The bottom, square layer is my trusty gluten free layer (a favourite choc/hazelnut cake). This is the only part I baked, if you call using a Thermomix baking!

Chocolate ganache poured over it all. Maltesers, sprinkles and smarties added.

We gave a lot of cake away after the party.

Each of these were very quick. I just made them up as I went along, which I found far less stressful than following someone else's design.

The other idea we tried once, was baking several plain cakes, then letting the birthday child cut them up and arrange them into a structure of their own choice. We fixed it in place with skewers. Then, they iced it and decorated it with lollies themselves. It was good for the preschool aged child who was into construction craft. Can't find the photo though...