Coolest Big Bird Sesame Street Cake

My sister and I made this Big Bird Sesame Street Cake for my mother-in-law, Beverly, who is a lover of Sesame Street…and Big Bird! We made this cake for her birthday and she loved it; her mother was very ill and passed away the next day. I remember getting to show her mother the cake on her daughter’s birthday and she looked at it and smiled. It has been a few years, but I think the cake was a ginger spice cake because her birthday is in the fall; although, any cake recipe will work for this cake.

This cake is adorable and so easy to make. All you need to do is bake a cake in a 9×13 pan and place it in the refrigerator to cool (so the frosting will not melt; I normally use a simple, homemade butter frosting with just softened butter and powdered sugar made to desired sweetness). Take the cake out of the refrigerator when cooled and take a knife (serrated or whichever knife you like using) and carve the cake into the flat image of Big Bird’s head (like pictured; make sure to carve out the image slowly so you make sure the outline is correct).

Once we carved out the outline of Big Bird’s head, we covered the entire cake with our butter cream frosting that we added about 1/2 – 1 teaspoon of Turmeric powder to! We like our cakes as natural as possible and turmeric powder achieves the best and brightest yellow, and you don’t even taste it! All-natural food colorings typically contains turmeric to make yellow…why not make it yourself?!

After we coated the cake in yellow frosting, we took plain white butter cream frosting and shaped it thick into Big Bird’s oval-shaped eyes and took a toothpick dipped in the white frosting and made wispy feather marks around the forehead (as seen in the picture). Then we took a small amount of plain butter cream frosting and added some cocoa powder to it (enough to turn it a dark brown but not dry it out with too much powder). We applied the cocoa frosting with a toothpick to make the pupils in the eyes.

Lastly, we took the plain butter cream frosting and separated a small amount into two small bowls. We placed all-natural red food color (making pink) for the eye lids into one bowl, and placed all-natural blue food coloring (making a purple-ish blue) into the other bowl for the eyeliner. We then delicately applied both colored frostings to the eyes with a toothpick and made the eye lids and eye liner. The cake was now complete!


Leave a Comment