Four easy and cute animal themed cakes for any level baker.
Happy Birthday, Avery!
Today is my sweet Avery’s 6th birthday! Hard to believe time actually goes by as quickly as it does. This baby of mine is about to start 1st grade and finally has two front teeth! Slow down time, slow down!
Avery’s Birthday Cake Requests
If you’re new around here, let me first say, welcome! Second, let me introduce you to a little girl with big opinions – especially when it comes to her birthday cakes. Since Avery could talk, she has had an opinion about her birthday cakes. At first, it was just color requests. Then it moved to flavor requests. And this year, it was color, flavor, and decor!
Here’s a look at her cakes from the last couple of years. First up, her Cotton Candy Cake from her 4th birthday. This was the first cake she not only requested colors for but also a specific flavor.
And then last year, you may recall our Peaches and Cream Cake drama. Avery felt very strongly that the cake layers should have a peach flavor. I thought it would be a breeze to create, but quickly learned how hard it is to bake peach flavor into cake layers. After eight rounds of recipe testing, I’m happy to report we created an amazing cake flavor and an equally amazing design!
So that gives you a little glimpse of some of the requests I’ve gotten from Miss A. Now let’s talk about this year!
Bear Unicorn Cake
Yup, you read that right! This year, Avery requested a bear unicorn cake. Never heard of it? Me either! This is an Avery original.
A few months ago, I got this set of animal face-decorating accessories from Sweet Tooth Fairy. Since then, Avery has been dreaming up her birthday cake but couldn’t quite make up her mind about which animal to choose. So, she did what any 5-year-old would do – she chose three! Lucky for me, she realized three animals in one cake was a bit over-the-top and narrowed it down to just two. Phew!
For the last month, Avery’s been talking about this cake. She’s drawn it, described it, and even molded it out of playdough to show me exactly what she wants. Chocolate cake, chocolate frosting, bear face, bear ears, winkie eye, a shiny unicorn horn, and light blue, light pink, and light purple unicorn hair with sprinkles. NBD.
We spent this past Sunday decorating the cake. And by “we,” yes I mean Avery stood right next to me every minute of the process, making sure I was doing everything right. And while this isn’t my usual type of cake, Avery’s reaction after I added each element was priceless. “Mom! I love it!” “Mom, I can’t believe you did that!’ “Mom, it’s amazing!”
She’s the world’s best cheerleader and made every minute of that cake worth it!
More Fun and Easy Animal Cakes
Since I was already tackling a bear unicorn cake for the first time, I thought I’d try out a few other animal cakes in hopes of finding you some easy options for making themed cakes at your kid’s request 🙂
And, of course, this also gave me four darling cakes to share with Brooke on Studio 5 today.
Party Animal Cake
This Party Animal Cake is the easiest of the group. I did a similar cake at Halloween but used homemade masks instead of party hats for the animal accessories.
For this cake, I simply frosted my cake as usual, added some sprinkles and topped the cake with animal figurines I bought at Target. The hats are made of construction paper and sprinkles I glued on with a hot glue gun.
I love this animal-themed cake because it’s truly so easy and can be customized to any color or type of animal you’re looking for.
Fox Cake
A slightly more advanced animal cake is this Fox Cake, inspired by Coco Cake Land. If you’re looking for fun and easy cake design ideas, this is a great resource. Lyndsay walks you through all the steps to making darling-themed cakes.
For my fox cake, I used a Wilton #32 piping tip, my vanilla buttercream, a little fondant, and some of the Sweet Tooth Fairy accessories.
Lamb Cake
And if you’re feeling like taking on something a little more advanced, this lamb cake is easy breezy but looks like a million bucks!
Instead of piping the face on top of the cake, we’re putting the face on the side and piping around it. I rolled out fondant for the face and used fondant for the eyes and edible marker to make the mouth. I then used the Wilton 1M tip to create the rosettes for the fur/body.
The lamb cake is made with three 6-inch cake layers, but could easily be a llama with another cake layer and more frosting around the bottom of the mouth. How cute would that be!
Of course, there are endless options for these types of animal cakes. Hopefully, these four just get the juices flowing and help you feel a little more confident in creating your own.
More Cakes You’ll Love
Hey! What do you do for the plastic ears pieces? Cover them in fondant?
Yes, you can cover them in fondant or buttercream.
Where did you get the “party” cake topper for the animal cake? It’s perfect!
My minds eye!
Hello –
Do you have more detailed instructions for the bear unicorn cake available (which size cake pans used, how much batter in each, how many tiers, decorating tips, etc.)?
Thank you!