Coolest 50s Theme 10th Birthday Cake

My daughter requested we do a 50s themed party for her 10th birthday, so off to the internet we went searching for cake ideas. This cake is a combination of a couple of images we found and some of my own creativity thrown in for good measure.

Please understand that I am not a baker, a cake artist, or anything like that. I am actually just a devoted Dad and marketing manager, but got bit by the cake bug when I went to the bakery to order her 1st birthday cake and was told it was going to cost almost $100! It was then that my ego kicked in and I said,”How hard can this be? It’s just eggs and flour and butter with some icing. I can do this.” 10 years and many cakes later, I still have the utmost respect for those who do it for a living and make it look so easy.

50s Theme 10th Birthday Cake Instructions

To make the “flow” of the dress for the poodle skirt layer, I taped cut styrofoam coffee cups to a 14″ cake dummy, iced them and covered it in pink fondant. The black ruffle beneath the skirt is black chenille.
There is a cake separator between the bottom layer and the checkerboard layer for stability. It is covered with a pink scarf to hide the seperator and add to the theme.
The checkerboard layer is actually the only real cake on this “sculpture.” It is a double layer 12″ cake iced in white on the sides and blue on the top with about 75 black fondant squares along the sides.
The yellow dots are Sixlets candies.
The records and notes are all fontant that I cut out and let dry over about a week.
The top layer is a 12″x4″x10″ square block of styrofoam I cut with my handy electric kitchen knife and dremel tool to round out the look. Then came the real fun… icing the cake and covering it with multi-colored fondant in various shapes, lengths, and widths., Actually, not fun and not perfect, but it turned out OK.
This cake from start to finish took about two weeks to create.

The fun part is that I have to make the cake again! Yes, twice. I’ll recycle the “fake” layers and re-make the real layer.

Our family does the family party one week and my daughter has her friends party another week, which so happens to be this weekend . My wife and I will have seventeen (yes 17, that is not a typo) at our house for a rockin’ 50s party/sleepover.

On top of all the cake work, I helped make Pink Ladies t-shirts for all the girls.

We’ll be having a hula-hoop contest, bubble gum blowing contest, and I rented a cotton candy machine and a sno-cone machine to be in keeping with the 50s diner/sock hop feel.

Morgan (my daughter) LOVED the cake and still thinks her Dad is the “bestest!” What more thanks could a Dad ask for?

50s Theme 10th Birthday Cake Instructions

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