STORE BOUGHT CAKE MAKEOVER

Learn how to easily makeover a standard store bought cake into an expensive bakery cake!

It took me no time at all to transform this store bought cake into something that I received many compliments on at my daughter’s 1st birthday party.

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WHY MAKEOVER A STORE BOUGHT CAKE

There is so much work that goes into throwing your child a party. Sometimes I joke that I go through so much work so I can ignore my kids for a week or two in advance while I plan the perfect party for them.

Whenever possible, I prefer to bake from scratch. I spent a lot of time on YouTube learning about cake decorating so I could make this Minnie Mouse cake for my daughter’s 3rd birthday. Of course, this was when I only had 1 child. My 2nd daughter was still quietly floating around in my belly not needing much attention or supervision. But I must say, I did really enjoy making this cake!

But for my younger daughter’s 1st birthday party we decided to do a 2-for-1 party. We held her birthday party and baptism on the same day. It saved a lot of work not having to throw both a birthday party and a baptism reception. But it also meant the one party was more work than either would have been individually. It’s tradition in my family to bake a bunch of Italian cookies for events such as baptisms. I was hard at work baking other things from scratch. I decided to grant myself a little grace and go store-bought for the cake.

Maybe you have too much going on. Maybe you just don’t like baking. Either way, sometimes store bought can be a much simpler way to go. But what do you do when you can’t afford (or simply don’t want to afford) the cake you could make yourself for so much less? Beautiful cakes are often pricey, and cheap cakes are often not so pretty. I’ll show you how to makeover a simple store bought cake into a custom bakery cake with very little time and effort.

SUPPLIES TO MAKEOVER A STORE BOUGHT CAKE

If you’re going for the look I did, all you really need are flowers! Flowers can be a gorgeous option for a cake for a birthday, graduation, baptism, wedding, and many other occasions. The purple orchids I used were actually sugar flowers that weren’t used on our wedding cake 7 years ago! We chose to use fresh flowers, so I’ve been saving the sugar flowers and slowly using them over the years. I liked the connection of using our wedding cake flowers for our daughter’s cake.

Although I combined my leftover wedding flowers with flowers from my local specialty baking store, here are some pretty sugar flowers I found online.

Fresh flowers are also a gorgeous option. And if you don’t want to do flowers, there are so many ways you can get creative. Perhaps you want to add some army men or small animals or jelly beans! You are only limited to as far as your imagination can take you. But, you guys, once you have a plan, this is SO EASY!

HOW TO MAKEOVER A STORE BOUGHT CAKE

Here is the cake I started with

I specifically requested only pink frosting so I wouldn’t have a bunch of colors to compete with. Normally the frosting colors aren’t as pretty or natural as the colors you can get in either sugar or fresh flowers. You don’t want a bunch of bright colors competing for attention. You could even ask for no frosted flowers. I didn’t do that because I wasn’t sure I had enough flowers to fill everything in.

Next you simply start pressing the flowers into the cake. You’ll want a game plan first. You can pull one out and put a different one in it’s place. However, if you put a flower somewhere that you wish you hadn’t, there’s no going back because the frosting will be messed up.

Here’s the finished cake. This picture was taken at the birthday party just before we pulled the flowers all out and cut it.