Do you bake and/or ice the birthday cake the day before or on day of party?

[LoveKnowsNoBounds]

Hi,
I'm making a diego cake, green grass and a little river running through. Then bought these cake figurines to go on top. I'm planning to make quite a few of the desserts and I'm not sure whether to make the birthday cake the night before. I want it to taste nice of course but to retain its look. What do you usually do? Thanks

[Beach Mama]

Hey Jan, can you believe they are nearly 4 Booooo. Anyway I always have a billion things to do otherwise so I do mine the night before and then I usually wrap it in glad wrap and it stays nice and fresh that way. It also means if something stuffs up I have time to do it again!!! Diego cake sounds great! I am attempting Tinkerbelle this year!

[Mum2Romone]

I did it the morning of the party because i was paranoid something would happen to it in the fridge overnight with the butter icing... so i just whipped up the icing fresh, made the cake the day before... and had plenty of time to decorate,, a little tip.. with the grass you can put coconut in a glad bag and add green colouring to get a bit of texture in the grass ( looks great) and the same with the water...

I made a NUmber 2 for DS with freen grass, chocolate (brown ) racing track and the cake was rainbow.. If you want to make a rainbow cake... the kids love it !!!! Seperate your cake mixture into different bowls, use a little food colouring to your taste, and then pour the colours one of top of the other in the pan... I did pink , blue and green and it looked great, even had some purple through it....

[beckoes]

i made a cake for dds 'best big sister party' the other day, i made the actual cake on saturday day, decorated it saturday night and left it in the cool back room over night. it was fine!!! what sort of cake/icing??

[Beach Mama]

Forgot to mention, I make the cake the night before but I ice it in the morning.

[LoveKnowsNoBounds]

Thanks for your replies ladies I'm thinking of using butter cream icing. There is a recipe on the Wilton website that gets a rave review, though it uses vegetable shortening (Copha). I'm very scared about icing on the day of the party but I think it will get the best result. Will have to get up very early! I will have to bake the cake the night before. Not very confident with icing cakes but I'll give it a go!

Tan - I know, can't believe they are 4! This last year went by especially quickly. A tinkerbelle cake sounds lovely - how are you doing that?

[Beach Mama]

I'm thinking of doing a dolly varden with the doll coming out the top, or else just a tall round cake(2 on top of each other) in green with pink and purple flowers with a tink on top! Still undecided!
Your plan sounds good it is stressful but if u do the cake first u will have time to do everything else once it's done!

[MummyNaomi]

I do them the night before, then I dont have to stress on the morning - I used butter cream icing and it was prefectly fine after being in the fridge over night

A tip though - if icing at night - don't do it under down lights - the heat from them will melt your icing (worked this out the hard way and had to decorate the cake by dimmed light with the aircon running HHAHAHAHAHAHAHA)

[LoveKnowsNoBounds]

Thanks, that's a great tip! Any tried and true butter cream recipes anyone willing to share?

[Mum2Romone]

I use a heap of icing sugar a few tablespoons of butter and a few teaspoons of milk with an electric blender in low speed and see how it thickens etc, then i add more icing sugar to taste if it needs it... and colour away... i hate copha, the more butter the creamier and the more icing sugar , thicker.... and milk if you need smoothness,

[Purple Penguin]

Do you have time to do a test run cake so you can get an idea of the consistency of the buttercream icing etc?

Depending on the difficulty level of the cake and how much time I will have in the days coming up to the party, I often make the cakes ahead of time and freeze them, them bring them out the night before, it's easier to put icing on the cake if it's cold, the cake not the icing. ITMS