My how time flies!  I remember when I used to have the time to make my kids’ birthday cakes.  From scratch.  Well, the cake was actually a cake mix, but I borrowed “professional” pans from my mom, built the sturdy bases, split the cake, filled it, mixed the buttercream frosting, frosted the cake, came up with a design to decorate the cake, etc. etc. etc.

Now…uh…..there’s no way!  No time!

Costco makes and decorates all our cakes now.  Sort of.

Costco has delicious cakes at a great price ($16 for a half sheet!), but they have a limited selection of decorations.  Sometimes the kids are OK with that, sometimes they want a character cake (ie Spider-man or Harley Davidson).

Someone on Facebook was wanting to know where they could pick up an inexpensive decorated cake… after pricing out decorated cakes from the grocery stores (too expensive), and checking out Costco’s selection (didn’t have the theme she was looking for).

I shared this tip:

Order your cake from Costco, but don’t have them decorate it.  Just have them frost it plain white and put a border around it.  No writing, no nothing.

Then go to the Decorette Shop and pick up one of their image transfers, or a bag of cupcake picks or other cake doo-dads and decorate the cake yourself!

Here are the cakes I’ve decorated using the “undecorated Costco cake” method:

 

This one is one of my all time favorites:

 

Crushed Oreos for the “dirt”!

This next one has an image transfer and cupcake picks:

 

This one I designed on my own:

(I should add another tip….if you CAN frost and decorate a cake yourself, you can cut your Costco cake in 1/2, separate the two cakes onto two separate sheets.  Put one in the freezer (uncovered).  When completely frozen, wrap it tightly.  (If you wrap it before you freeze it you will mash the frosting.)

To “fix” the cake, mix frosting for the now exposed side, add a border that matches….and voila!

And since I’m sharing cakes, here are some of the other cakes that I’ve made, NOT using the Costco cheating method:

And the one that takes the cake…(hee hee)

…is Brooke’s First Birthday cake:

The top layer came off and was her “first” cake- she had it all to herself!