Don’t let a December birthday get swallowed by Christmas or Hanukkah or New Year’s with these December birthday cake ideas!
Of course, you can ignore the December holidays completely and make a standard birthday cake. Piped swirls and cheerful sprinkles are fun but they're not unique to December birthday cakes. You’re not reading this for an obvious idea like that!
If you want to incorporate elements of December in a birthday cake, you’ll prefer the next ideas.
Zodiac cakes are really trendy, with catchy messages combined with the vintage or lambeth style of excessive piping. Use different colours and different piping tips to create elaborate designs.
Popular piping tips for vintage cakes are star tips like a 4B or #32. For more details, check out my tutorial on 10 secrets for vintage cakes.
Check the zodiac calendar because December birthdays could be either Sagittarius or Capricorn!
Turn the birthday date into a joke with this funny message! Use a small round piping tip to pipe thin lines for the letters.
Here are some tips for piping messages. Use a toothpick to scrape off any lines you don’t like or an offset spatula for several letters. This works best if you chill the cake before piping the message so the frosting underneath is firm. To fit a word into a gap or space, start with the middle letter and work your way out. And leave piping borders until the end so you don’t knock them as you pipe!
Blend Christmas with birthday vibes with this fun, colorful design. Pipe zig zags with a petal tip like a #104 or #125. Hold the wide part of the tip against the cake with the pointed side facing outwards, wiggling back and forth. Make the lines shorter and shorter as you go up, to make Christmas trees.
If you’re using several colours it’s quickest to pipe all of the trees of one colour first. Then switch the piping tip to another piping bag with the next colour to pipe all of those trees. Add sprinkles to make it even more celebratory, attaching them now while the buttercream trees are still soft and sticky.
For a low effort cake that still delivers all of the flavour, bake your cake in an oven-proof dish . After it cools, decorate it right there in the dish! You can pipe the frosting on or spread it and smooth it.
Make a calendar by piping the days of the month and circling the birthday date. You can add letters for the days of the week at the top, if you like.
Good news: this tray bake cake will be just as effortless to serve as it was to make!
Focus on winter with a cake decorated with snowflakes. I think the most striking was to do this is with buttercream carving. Cover a cake with a crumb coat and then another layer of frosting, which will be the colour of the snowflakes. Let it chill and set in the fridge for at least an hour and then add another colour on top. Or several colours, like with this watercolor style:
I teach watercolour frosting in my free online course on 10 Frosting Techniques. Chill this frosting for another hour in the fridge. Then carve the buttercream using a petal piping tip or a special tool. Clay modeling tools are ideal and you can buy them on Amazon.
Dip the metal into warm water before carving for the neatest results. Dry it off before using it because water on the cake can make the colours run.
Use seasonal ingredients in your cake, for example Eggnog. This eggnog cake has decadent eggnog filling and frosting that tastes even better than the drink!
Peppermint is another great seasonal flavour for cakes. I like to crush and add them to cream cheese buttercream for a delicious filling between cake layers.
Make a December figure cake, like a Gingerbread man or snowman or reindeer. I used my Best Chocolate Buttercream to frost this cake to turn into a reindeer. For ears, frost two halves of an Oreo cookie with a toothpick stuck in the middle of each half.
The antlers are made out of melted chocolate, piped through a ziplock bag with a hole cut off the corner. Use a wooden skewer so that after they set you can poke them into the cake.
The face is easy with shapes cut out of parchment or wax paper to make stencils. Spread frosting over them and then peel them off to make neat shapes. I used a petal piping to carve out a smile.
Pipe white details onto the eyes with plain white buttercream. Pipe more chocolate buttercream for fur on top of the cake, between the antlers and ears. To make this more of a birthday cake you could add a party hat!
Embrace the season with a Christmas themed cake like this gingerbread house cake. Admittedly, it has nothing to do with birthdays but I’m sure your time and effort will be appreciated! If the person loves cake then I’m sure they won’t mind what shape it is.
For a New Year's Eve birthday, make this fun party llama birthday cake!
Learn how to make this design and hundreds more on my online cake school and get access too ALL of my courses with my All You Can Cake membership. Not sure? Start your free 7 day trial!
Tell me in the comments which December birthday cake ideas are your favourite! And save these ideas to Pinterest with the pins below!
You can also watch a video of these 10 December birthday cake ideas:
