

Step-by-step recipes, designs and color pics of the easiest (and cutest) birthday cakes for boys and girls
Serves 16
Ingredients:
- 1 (13 by 9-inch) cake
- 2 cans (16 oz each) vanilla frosting
- Green food coloring
- Red food coloring
- Yellow food coloring
- 1 bag (16 oz) M&M's
- 2 blue Jolly Rancher Fruit Chews
- 2 brown M&M's Minis
- 2 strawberry-flavored Mentos
- 1 pink jelly bean
- 4 pieces Big Red chewing gum
- 1 red M&M's Minis
What you'll need:
- A bread knife
- A small paring knife
- A serrated knife
- 3 resealable sandwich-size plastic bags (Ziploc)
Trimming the cake:
- Place cake on a clean work surface. Using a bread knife, trim the top of the cake to make it level. Following template, cut out shape with a small paring knife. Transfer the cake to a serving platter.
For the green, pink, white, and yellow frosting:
- Spoon the contents of one can of vanilla frosting into a bowl. Tint the frosting green with the green food coloring.
- In a separate bowl, tint ½ cup of vanilla frosting light pink with the red food coloring.
- Spoon 1 Tbsp of vanilla frosting into a small bowl and add enough red food coloring to tint it dark red. Spoon into a small resealable plastic bag.
- Spoon 1 Tbsp of the untinted vanilla frosting into another small resealable plastic bag.
- Tint the remaining vanilla frosting bright yellow with the yellow food coloring. Spoon ¾ cup of the yellow frosting into a resealable plastic bag.
Frosting the cake:
- Spread the face area with the pink frosting and make smooth.
- Spread the remaining yellow frosting on the top and sides of the hair area.
- Spread the green frosting over the body area and make smooth.
- To add scales to her tail, attach green, yellow, and blue M&M's all over the mermaid's body in clusters of 3, as pictured.
- Roll out the blue fruit chews and cut out ¼ by 2-inch triangles. Attach triangles to the tail fin.
For the finishing touches:
- Snip very small corners from the bags of white, red, and yellow frosting.
- Pipe white dots on the mermaid's face for her eyes and attach the brown M&M's Minis.
- Pipe the mermaid's mouth with red frosting.
- Add the pink Mentos as the cheeks. Add the pink jelly bean for the nose.
- Pipe yellow eyebrows. Pipe curls of yellow frosting over the yellow hair area.
- To make the bow, shape a loop from one piece of Big Red gum, squeezing the sides of the loop together at the seam. Repeat with a second loop of gum. Take the 2 other pieces of gum and use your scissors to taper one end while cutting notches into the other end for the bow's tails. Press the 4 pieces of gum together to form the bow. Add a red candy to the center of the bow.
Cake Anatomy:

Cake Cutout:












