Easy Unicorn Birthday Cake and Decorations

If you’ve got a little girl, chances are she’s obsessed with unicorns. Unicorns clearly made a comeback this year. I’m in my 40s and I remember having a unicorn Trapper Keeper in 4th grade! Anyone else remember those beloved Trapper Keepers?? So it’s cute to me that my daughter has an equally fond obsession with the mythical creatures. When it came time for her 8th birthday party, she wanted a unicorn birthday cake and decorations!

I’ll start by saying, I’m not a baker. I make cakes from boxes and my frosting comes from cans.  And it doesn’t bother me one bit. There are some skills I’ll never learn and baking homemade cakes is one of them! But every year for my kids’ birthdays I attempt some kind of cake that they love and decorating has become one of our favorite things.

We won’t mention the time that I attempted a castle cake and all my princesses were drowning in the icing because it was too hot in my kitchen. And the time I accidentally put the moat in the wrong place. Kids don’t care about all those details – they love it because you made it! It doesn’t have to look professional or cost a crazy amount of money.

Unicorn Birthday Cake and Decorations

When she said unicorn cake, I immediately turned to Pinterest. And quickly became discouraged. I don’t know how to use fondant and my skills aren’t quite as good as they need to be to pull off a unicorn cake. But we figured it out and it was simple. Truth be told, my daughter did most of the decorating herself just the way she wanted it! Most of the cakes we saw were very tall and elaborate, but we chose a simple unicorn cake design with only 2 layers.

Unicorn Cake Supplies

• 1 box of cake mix 
• 3 cans of frosting
• black gel icing tube
• 8 inch cake pans (2)
• ice cream cone
• plastic gems – we used inexpensive gems from a party supply store
• silver display tray – you can find these at any party supply store or craft store
• gold edible dust
• pastel food coloring
• cake decorating set

Bake your cake in two 8 inch round pans. Let cool completely and then stack the layers on your decorative platter and frost. Put in the refrigerator for a few hours to let the icing harden a bit. It’s easier to fix mistakes when the icing isn’t so gooey. 

Cover one ice cream cone in white frosting and then use the gold spray dust to “paint” it gold. Or silver – whichever you prefer. Add it to the middle of your cake. The dust got a little smushed when I added it to the cake, but it’s ok. No one noticed but me. 

Use pastel food coloring to tint icing pink, blue, and purple and then add each color to a disposable decorating bag.

Test out a few of the tips to see which one you prefer. We ended up making a few different styles in varying sizes. Just use a piece of wax paper to test on before you add to the cake.

My daughter did all the decorating of the “unicorn hair” herself. She added different colors in a sort of side ponytail design and then topped it off with some pastel colored gems. Just add varying sizes of each color with your preferred tip and swirl it around the side of the cake. I wish I could show you some of the actual decorating shots but we did it the night before her party and she had just showered, so she didn’t have enough clothes on for blog pics! One day she’ll see the importance of wearing clothes!

Draw a mouth and eyes with lashes with the black gel. No worries if you mess up. Just scrape it off, add more white frosting and try again.

Unicorn Birthday Party Supplies

• plates/napkins/cups
• plastic table cloth – we used a combo of two different colors
• pastel streamers
• unicorn headbands
• party/photo props

The decorating part can get out of hand if you aren’t careful. There are so many cute unicorn birthday party accessories. We didn’t buy matching everything. But, the photo props were a big hit with the girls. Tape some pastel streamers to a wall or tall piece of furniture for their backdrop and let them go crazy with the props. 

Add a few unicorn birthday props, confetti, and call it good! We did simple finger foods like fruit and fruit dip, cheese puffs, and pizza. I didn’t make elaborate “unicorn poop” or fairy dust favors, but we did buy some of the $1 cups from the party supply place for each girl.

This was my favorite cake we did for her so far. It was much easier than I expected, especially since she did a lot of the decorating work! The girls loved it and it was delicious! 

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