Easy Graduation Cakes

Graduation cakes are increasingly popular and very much part of the graduation celebrations. The graduation cake is presented at a special moment in the party and is admired by all the guests who see a beautiful cake. They see the lit candles, beaming graduate and proud family. There is no doubt a that a good looking cake is fairly essential. Even better is a cake that captures the spirit of the graduate and does add something special to the party. For example I once saw a graduate who is destined to be a math professor getting a cake that was shaped as books with Math and math symbols adorning the cake. The graduation cake decorations just suited the graduate perfectly.  Of course any designs you create needs to be doable in terms of purchasing a cake, however with the amazing variety of cake decorations, toppers and sugar shapes most designs can be brought to life to create a brilliant cake.

Start with how you are going to produce the cake. The cake can be made from scratch, you can use a cake mix, you can buy a store cake to decorate or you could just buy a graduation cake from a great baker. It may not matter in the end, as long as the cake looks and tastes fantastic. I love the idea of making graduation cakes completely by myself as that is my hobby. However I have lots of friends who have very successfully made cakes using cake mixes with some personally added ingredients. I don’t think anyone would know the difference.

One thing I used to find difficult is getting the cake to the right size. You just cannot run out of cake. My new strategy is to calculate the number of likely guests and add the extra 15% that turned up at our last graduation party. Our daughter had invited some extra friends at school.

I like to make the flavor in accordance with the tastes of the graduate, although I would draw the line at something like prawns. However so far I have made 2 chocolate cakes and one vanilla one. The fillings I used suited the overall cake. That turned out to be more chocolate and some lemon filling in the vanilla one.  If you are making the cake yourself there are lots of brilliant cake books which will give you the ingredients, recipes and coking instructions that you need. The books should give guidelines on numbers of people and how to adjust the quantities.

The cake itself being centre stage does need to be well decorated. Once it is frosted in the right color then you can complete the decorations. Traditional designs like graduation caps and scrolls do seem to be just perfect. However you may wish to blend in designs that reflect the graduate. That could be using their favorite sport or hobby, their major subject or even their new career.

Making graduation cakes is great to do. I love making graduation cakes as I love baking but I also like the contribution it can make to the celebrations.