Easy Peasy Unicorn Cake

This is a really fun and pretty birthday cake for the unicorn fiend in your life. Wild unicorns come in beautiful shades of pink, purple and blue but feel free to use your favorite colors, sprinkles and glitters! Follow my simple step-by-step instructions for a truly spectacular birthday party centerpiece. The ears and horn take a while to firm up, so we would recommend starting work on these the day before so they have time to set before placing on the cake. 

 

 

 

Ingredients 

 

For the cake: 

4 free-range eggs 

220g caster sugar 

220g softened butter or margarine 

220g self-raising flour 

1.5 tablespoons multi-colored sprinkles 

 

For the decoration: 

500g softened butter 

600g icing sugar 

food colorings: cream, purple, blue and pink 

1kg ready-to-roll icing coloured pale pink, blue, purple and cream/yellow 

Edible gold paint 

Glitter 

Sprinkles 

 

 

Equipment 

 

Large mixing bowl (x2) 

Smaller mixing bowls (x3) 

Silicone headed spatula 

Tala Performance Non-Stick 18cm Sphere baking pan 

Cake tester 

Cooling rack 

Greaseproof paper 

Cake leveler 

Mini palette knife 

Mini rolling pin 

Cake smoother 

Tala 6-Piece Icing Set (for buttercream) 

Pastry brush 

Kebab sticks (x3) 

Cake drum 

Washi tape or ribbon 

 

 Cake Method 

• To prepare, preheat the oven to 150 degrees Celsius (302 degrees Fahrenheit) and grease and flour the sphere tin and set to one side. 

 

• Cream the margarine and sugar in a mixing bowl, add the eggs and finally the flour, mixing to a smooth, lump-free consistency. Finally, add the sprinkles, mix again and transfer to the sphere plan (mix and bake). Place in the center of the oven and bake for about an hour. After 30 minutes, turn the pan and bake again for 15 minutes. Check the cake at 15 minute intervals until the top is risen, springs back into shape and a cake tester appears to be clean when removed. Place the cake on wire rack to cool completely. 

 

• While the cake is cooling you can prepare the icings. Cream the softened butter and icing sugar in a large mixing bowl. Leave half of the mixture in the bowl and divide the other half between three smaller mixing bowls. Add a few drops of food coloring to colour each mixture - I chose pink, blue and purple! 

 

• Brush the kebab sticks with a little water and set aside. Sprinkle the work surface with icing sugar, roll out the cream ready-to-roll icing and cut out two leaf shapes (these will be the ears). Then roll and cut two slightly smaller pink leaf shapes, sticking each on top of each cream leaf with a little water. Place the end of a kebab stick in the centre of the bottom of each leaf and pinch the icing so that it attaches to the kebab stick. Now for the horn! Roll a long thin sausage of cream icing with a tapered end. Carefully wrap the sausage around the stick in a spiral shape, ensuring that the end of the stick is concealed. Place the ears and horn in a safe place to dry out over night. When the horn is dry, paint with edible gold paint

 

• Use a cake leveller to split the cake horizontally into three equal layers. Lay the cake on a piece of greaseproof paper and use a mini palette knife to spread the plain buttercream between the layers and all over the surface of the cake. Chill and then apply another layer of the buttercream and repeat until the cake appears to be evenly covered. Return the cake to the fridge.  

 

• Prepare the rainbow board by forming equal sized sausages of coloured icing (make sure you leave some pink icing aside for the nose), rolling them together lengthways into one big sausage and looping the sausage in half and twisting it. Repeat, then squish the icing into a big ball before rolling out. (You may want to give it another go for a more marbelled effect.) Sprinkle plenty of icing sugar on the surface and roll out the icing into a big pancake. Transfer to the drum and use the rolling pin and cake smoother to secure the icing onto the drum. Trim off any excess icing.  

 

• Secure the cake to the board with a dab of buttercream icing. Then roll out the pink nose (a semi circle shape) and two nostrils (a circle cut with a piping nozzle cut in half) and attach to the cake as shown in the photograph. The icing should stick to the cake without the need for any water. Poke the two ears into the cake and the horn in between. 

 

• Transfer two lots of different colour buttercream into the same piping bag (see below) and pipe swirls of icing around the ears and horn to resemble a main. Use the third lot of coloured buttercream to make different sized swirls in a different colour.

 

• Reserve a few tiny scraps of cream icing and colour the rest deep purple for the eyes. For each eye, make a sausage with pointed ends for the brow, a ball squashed flat for the eye and a tiny sausage with a pointed end for the eye lash. Use the tiny scraps of cream icing to make little highlights on the eye. Attach these with a little water.

 

• To finish, secure a length of pretty washi tape (or ribbon) to hide the edge of the cake board, throw over a few sprinkles, a spritz of glitter and stand back to admire your magical results! Rainbows and unicorns indeed! 

 

Tips: 
When adding the sprinkles to the cake mix, try to not delay as the colour of the sprinkles tends to bleed into the cake batter. 
 
Before turning out the cake, allow it to rest in the pan for at least five minutes as it might break up if removed straight away. 
 
Some glitter is only safe for use on removable decorations – check the packaging carefully. 
 
Cover ready-to-roll icing with cling-film when not in use to stop it drying out.