A Guide to Celebration Cakes

Though you don’t actually need a celebration to make a cake - Friday Food Chat with Kath

I don’t make celebration cakes* often, I want to spend more time eating than baking. And celebration cakes are often a time consuming affair.

So, if I am going to make a cake worthy of a celebration or just for a fun baking project (there are multitudes of reasons why you might want to make a cake, top of the list is ‘just because you want to’, no official celebration required), I want the effort I put into it to be well worth it flavour wise.

I can’t stand cakes that look amazing but don’t deliver on flavour. I don’t see the point in spending so much time making a cake that ends up being a bit disappointing. This is a large part of the reason I love making more simple cakes that are so flavoursome, comforting and more-ish that not only is one slice not enough, but I find myself thinking about when I could make that cake again even though we haven’t finished it yet!

However! There are great celebration worthy cakes out there that will be worth your while and be so tasty you make plans to have a second slice ASAP.

Below are my top picks:

1. This Ultimate Vanilla Cake I created for Grounded Pleasures ages ago, is still a firm favourite of mine. I made a version of this with three cake layers for a friends baby shower a few years ago too and with some theme specific decoration it was a great celebration cake. A nice tart raspberry or mixed berry jam for the filling is essential to balance the sweet vanilla buttercream in this recipe.

2. For the chocolate lovers, this Decadent Chocolate Cake is sure to have your chocolate needs covered! It is rich and definitely one to make when you have a few people to share it with. You can adapt the proportions of chocolate to suit your tastes - less dark choc and more milk choc for example. As long as the total quantities stay the same it will be great!

3. This Pistachio and Lemon Layer Cake (pictured above) is one for the pistachio lovers (me)! I created this cake after having something similar at Beatrix in Melbourne back in 2019. It uses a quick lemon curd for the filling, however you can use store bought lemon curd instead.

4. When you want a pretty floral cake this Vanilla Cake with Passionfruit Curd (pictured below) is what you should make. Pretty pink icing, decorated with fresh edible flowers and edible gold leaf, the decoration on this one is what will catch everyones eye. I like using store bought passionfruit curd for this cake as it tends to have a thicker consistency than anything I can make which works better for a cake filling.

*by celebration cake I mean something with multiple elements (cake, filling, icing, decoration) that is probably a layer cake, will feed more people than I usually need to cater for (hence the focus on celebrations as I imagine that’s when I would actually need a cake like this! Your requirements/definition of this may differ from mine!) and will require a decent amount of time and preparation to make it all happen. Basically, it’s the opposite to an everyday cake!

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Spectacular Double Layer Pavlova

It’s not just cakes that can be extra special for celebrations! This double layer Raspberry and Rose Pavlova is another celebration worthy bake for those that like dessert more than cake, or just love a good Pavlova.

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