10 First Birthday Cake Ideas

A first birthday is an exciting celebration. The first year of a child’s life is a great time to reflect and see how far you and your son or daughter have come. 

If you are anything like me,you want the party to be fun and memorable. One way that you do that is by the decorations and cake. 

The new thing these days is making a “smash” or individual cake for the birthday kid! Many parents go all out and make the most ambitious and unbelievable cakes. 

But for most of us, those are cakes that we only ever will wish for. So why can’t we dream up some of the amazing first birthday cake ideas or even some ideas that are more simple! 

1.Ball Cakes

 A ball cake is such a fun idea. Kids love balls! You can do this by making more of a sports cake or a bunch of fun little balls like in a bounce house. 

Some candies you could use to decorate are; gobbstoppers, whoopers, nerds, cookie dough bites, gum balls, sixlets, dots etc. or just keep it simple by decorating with frosting.

2. Sprinkle Cake

 This cake just screams party to me. The more sprinkles the better! Every child loves sprinkles and you can decorate it in a variety of ways as seen above. Add cotton candy to the top or streamers, but make it your own.

Another fun idea is to do sprinkle cupcakes. This is a great way to feed a lot of people and still make things festive.  

3. Animal Cake

Children love animals! Again there are so many options. Depending on how all out you want to go you can do a tiered cake with a couple animals on each level  or do the whole cake as one animal. 

One of the cutest cakes I found is by Betty Crocker. It is a lion cake decorated with Cheerios. You can check it out here.

4. Fruit Cake 

One of the most delicious and fun cakes, are cakes with fruit on them. If your kids are anything like mine, they love fruit! The fruit not only adds some great color, but a ton of flavor as well.

5. Rainbow Cake

Rainbow cakes are such a beautiful sight. They bring out so many happy colors. I love that you can add a whole new level to the color spectrum by making a cake or cupcakes that follow the rainbow.

One thing I love to do is make the cupcakes homemade and coloring with natural dyes. To get a few ideas for natural food dyes click here.

6. Boy Cakes

This category I call boy cakes because they, generally are what boys love, but you could do some of these for girls as well.

I love the idea of cars, trucks or things that go. A couple of ideas I have are by making the whole cake a car or by doing cupcakes and placing a little toy car on the top.

Dinosaurs are another fan favorite. If you want to put Dinos on the cake or in the shape of a Dino use cupcakes to help shape it!

7. Sea Cakes

Under the sea, with fish and mermaids life can’t get better. These couple examples are very fancy and exciting. However, I have found there are a ton of simple ways to decorate a sea cake.

Use simple techniques and find little decorations or candies like Swedish fish to make it your own.

8. Fairy Tale Cakes

Little children have big dreams. They have imaginations that they want to bring to life. These cakes are great ways to help them see something that they are familiar with or excited to see.

A few different ideas could be ones that are above as well as Mickey or Minnie Mouse, Disney characters, Cartoons and Instruments.

9. Balloon Cake

Saving the best for last, BALLOON CAKE! I LOVE THIS! Balloon are so fun for everyone. Making this cake come to life is so exciting for a first birthday.