Homemade birthday cakes can be detailed, impressive, and pack a ton of flavor. You can make your own homemade birthday cake using your favorite flavors to customize especially for you. Our homemade birthday cake ideas include puff pastry, mousse, ganache, and tarts to give you a variety of selection.
1. Mille Feuille Cake
Mille Feuille cake is made by baking puff pastry into sheets.
The sheets are stacked in layers. In between the layers are vanilla pastry cream.
The vanilla pastry is made by adding vanilla beans, and infusing the pod into the pastry cream.
Mille Feuille cake is topped with royal icing and melted bittersweet dark chocolate.
Mille Feuille has specific lines of chocolate that are made with a sharp knife, creating beautiful lines on the top of the cake.
2. Chocolate mousse cake
Chocolate cake is made by adding instant coffee and cocoa powder to a buttermilk cake base.
The next layer is the chocolate mousse, which is made by adding gelatin to warm heavy cream and chocolate.
The gelatin helps to stabilize the chocolate mousse for using it in a cake.
The chocolate mousse cake is topped with chocolate ganache to give it a rich chocolatey flavor.
3. Lavender lemon cake with white chocolate buttercream
Lavender cake is made by adding culinary lavender to a vanilla buttermilk cake base.
Lemon curd fills the layers of the cake.
The white chocolate buttercream is made by adding melted vanilla chocolate to a buttercream base.
This frosting covers the lavender lemon cake, making it very flavorful and light.
4. Banana cream cake
Banana cream cake is made by adding bananas to a vanilla cake base.
Banana cream cake is filled with vanilla pastry cream. Banana cream cake is frosted with banana buttercream icing.
Banana buttercream icing is made with banana extract to buttercream frosting.
You could add food coloring to the icing if you wanted it to have a hint of yellow in it.
The sides of the cake have crushed graham crackers, and the top of the cake has banana chips for added decoration.
5. Coconut cream cake
Coconut cream cake is made by adding coconut emulsion and coconut milk to a vanilla cake base.
Coconut cream cake is filled and covered with coconut buttercream frosting.
The coconut buttercream icing is made by adding cream of coconut and coconut emulsion to buttercream icing.
6. Champagne cake with strawberry buttercream
Champagne cake is made by adding champagne, strawberry extract, and chopped strawberries to a vanilla cake base.
The cake layers have a thin layer of champagne infused syrup.
The cake has small holes poked in it to have the champagne syrup seep into the cake, making it a little sweeter with more champagne flavor.
The cake is filled with layers of cream cheese icing, made with whipped cream, strawberry extract and strawberry purée.
The cake is covered top to bottom in champagne buttercream frosting, with added strawberry extract and strawberry purée.
The cake has a light pink color to the frosting from the strawberries.
When the cake is cut, it has the chopped strawberries popping with color throughout the layered pink cake.
7. Mocha cake with toffee bits
Mocha cake is made by adding coffee and cocoa powder to a vanilla cake base.
Toasted pecans and toffee bits are added to the cake to be baked into the cake only on the top of the batter.
The cake is covered in mocha buttercream icing, which is made by adding coffee and cocoa powder to a vanilla buttercream icing.
The cake is topped with a few more toasted pecans and toffee bits for added decoration and flavor.
8. Irish cream cake
Irish cream cake is made by adding Irish cream and cocoa powder to a buttermilk vanilla cake base.
In between the layers of cake is Irish cream infused whipped cream.
The cake is covered in Irish cream flavored buttercream icing.
Using the drip method, chocolate ganache is dripped from the top of the cake down the sides of the Irish cream cake.
9. Birthday Cake
Classic birthday cake is a vanilla cake base made with rainbow sprinkles folded.
Birthday cake can also be made with a hint of almond flavor to give it a smooth and memorable finish.
The icing for birthday cake is classic vanilla buttercream icing piped on the top of the cake and around the edges of the birthday cake.
10. No Bake Lemon Tart
No bake lemon tart is made by first creating a pie crust tart shell.
The tart shell is baked, and then brushed with white chocolate.
The white chocolate acts as a barrier to prevent the tart shell from going soggy. Lemon cream is the filling inside the lemon tart.
Lemon cream is creamier than lemon curd, since it has butter melted into the custard at the end.
No bake lemon tart has a sharp lemon flavor, complimented with the white chocolate sweetened pie crust.
11. Salted Caramel and Hazelnut Cake
Salted caramel and hazelnut cake is make with puff pastry layers.
The puff pastry is baked, and then cut into strips for individual servings. You could also make it in a regular rectangular shaped birthday cake.
Place one layer of puff pastry as the bottom layer, then pipe a strip of salted caramel cream filling. It will look more eye catching if you do 1 circle, and then pipe the next circle beside it.
Next, pipe a layer of hazelnut sauce beside the salted caramel cream filling. Repeat until the edge of the puff pastry. Hazelnut sauce is made by creating praline paste, and then combining it with hot cream.
Add another layer of puff pastry and repeat piping the salted caramel cream filling and hazelnut sauce.
Top with a final layer of puff pastry.
Dust the top with cocoa powder or icing sugar.
