Homemade Birthday Cake

One of our roommates recently turned 21 (woo!), so we decided to try and get creative with her cake. Naturally we turned to Pinterest for some birthday cake ideas. As always, it turned out some real gems. We were particularly intrigued by one pin we found for homemade birthday cake numbers.

This trick allows you to celebrate your age (because who doesn’t want to celebrate 21?) without having to buy those candles that are shaped like numbers. After all, they’re kind of expensive for something you’ll never use again. Plus, we think this trick looks much more chic- call it a homemade birthday cake for adults! We weren’t originally going to use this for the blog, but since it worked so well we thought we would share it with you! Here’s how our cake turned out compared to the original pin:

Our Version Pinterest Version

First we grabbed our ingredients and tools:

Cake mix
White icing
Chocolate bar
Chocolate chips
Cheese grater
Paper and Pen
Chocolate chip cookies

First, bake the cake it two round cake pans to the package directions. Once they are baked and cooled, frost and stack them. Using your pen, draw the numbers you want on the cake out on paper. Cut out the numbers and place them on the cake.

Although the original pin used sprinkles, we decided to use shaved chocolate to top our cake. Our roommate is obsessed with chocolate, so it seemed appropriate!

Using the cheese grater, we shaved the chocolate over the cake until it was covered.

Finally, we lifted the paper letters off of the cake. This can be a little tricky, so don’t be discouraged if you have to clean up your numbers a little bit at this point. We lined our numbers with chocolate chips to make them stand out more, then added chocolate chip cookies around the edges of the cake. Here’s our finished product: