Dressing Up a Store Bought Cake

For years, a favorite party trick of my sister and I has been dressing up a store bought cake! It is so much cheaper than a custom creation and can look just as festive. We do this so often that I have recent examples from Whit’s 12th birthday and CeeCee’s 8th birthday.

Gold and White Cake

We tend to use cakes with white buttercream icing from the Publix bakery, but you could certainly start with a chocolate cake too! This is a 5″ cake and was perfect for our family of four on Whit’s birthday. I always ask for a “pearl” border on the top and bottom, rather than the shell look that usually comes on a cake, and the smoothest icing possible on the top and sides.

Here, I added my own festive sprinkles (Fancy Sprinkles) to cover the top of the cake. Since the icing will be set by the time you bring your cake home, you will need fresh icing in order to adhere the sprinkles.

TIP: Ask for a container of extra icing from the bakery when you order the cake! This will ensure they match. If you are fully covering the cake, you can really use any jar of icing similar in color.

I carefully spread on a layer of icing over the top of the cake. It doesn’t need to be neat, just take care not to disturb the piped border. Then, I poured on the sprinkles and gently pressed them into the fresh icing.

For the bottom border, I pulled out round dragees from the sprinkle mix and dotted them along the bottom border between every other pearl. There is usually no need to add icing when pressing on individual sprinkles.

I added gold prism powder around the edges and to the top for extra shimmer (Fancy Sprinkles).

To top it all off, I added glitter numbers from Party City!

More from Whit’s Golden Birthday:

Mickey Mouse Treat Cake

For CeeCee’s Classic Confectionary Celebration, Sister chose a slightly larger 8″ cake from Publix since there were eight of us ($12). She had a rosette border piped around the top only and left the bottom unfinished, as she didn’t want the gold cake cardboard to show on her white cake stand.

To doll up this cake, we used the extra buttercream icing Sister ordered to pipe a border to cover the gold cardboard. (We both love THIS specific tool.) Then, we dotted on colorful sprinkles randomly around the top and bottom. There was no need to add additional icing for this – they stuck well in the existing borders.

The finishing touch was sliding in a Mickey Rice Krispie treat straight from the Main Street Confectionary! Cakes don’t always have to be topped with candles, think outside of the box for unique, memorable ideas. You can always add candles just before singing and blowing them out.

More from CeeCee’s Classic Confectionary Celebration:

Fancy Sprinkles

I loves sprinkles and prism powder from Fancy Sprinkles. They are SO cute! You can read more below.

If you’ve been around a looooong time, you will remember that Sister used to always doll up a store bought cake for Easter. I should dig up some photos of those to share for this year!

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One thought on “Dressing Up a Store Bought Cake

  1. Thanks for sharing all your neat ideas. I just had to comment that I borrowed the Wilton decorating tool from a friend and used it to make Ina’s Cacio e Pepe Cheese Puffs from her Modern Comfort Food cookbook. Thought I would mention as I believe you have that cookbook, too! They were delicious. And now I want to buy my own tool so that I can spiff up store bought cakes at home and make more cheese puffs. :- )

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