How To Make A Pizza Cake

Image © Pikwizard

A pizza cake birthday surprise is sure to raise a smile even in the most reticent of teenager.

While they may insist they're too old for a birthday cake we're sure they won't turn down a slice of this cake, which has been cleverly designed to look just like the real deal. And, let's face it, kids of all ages will see the appeal of this illusion cake and be begging you for a pizza party.

You can use most cake recipes to make the base of your pizza, so if you have a tried and tested one in amongst your recipes then you can use that. The trick is to ensure the cake is lovely and smooth and that it's not too tall. Of course, recipes that end with an overly tall cake could be carefully sliced in half so you have two thin bases: why not decorate one to look like a savoury pizza and the other as a pudding pizza?

Of course if they actually want a pizza party we've got tasty homemade pizza recipes and ideas to transform your living room into a cinema! This pizza cake will just be the icing on the cake when you bring it out.

For the cake: 175g softened butter, 175g caster sugar, three eggs, one teaspoon vanilla extract, one tablespoon of milk, 175g self raising flour.

For the topping: See suggestions below for ideas.

Image © manya_peace_45, under a Creative Commons license.

1) Preheat your oven to 180C/160C fan/gas mark four. Grease and line one 24cm round tin.

2) Mix together the sugar and butter until it is fluffy and pale coloured. Beat your eggs then add them to the cake mix a little at a time until everything is well combined. Add the vanilla extract and stir it well.

3) Sieve the flour into the cake batter and give it all a good mix. Finally, add in the milk to thin the batter a little. Pour into the prepared cake tin and smooth the top with a spatula.

4) Bake for 20-25 minutes. Check it is cooked through by inserting a skewer, if it comes out clean, it's cooked perfectly.

5) Leave the cake in the tin for five minutes, then remove and place to cool completely on a wire rack.

Sweet Sensation

Ingredients: Jam, Ferrero Rocher, yellow, green and black jelly beans, white chocolate.

1) Once cooled, spread the jam over the top of the cake, leaving a rim of cake all around the edge to make it look like the pizza crust.

2) Slice the Ferrero Rocher in half and place on top to look like meatballs. Scatter over the yellow and green jelly beans to look like peppers. Chop the black jelly beans in half and add to the pizza cake for olives.

3) Finish by finely grating your white chocolate over the top to look like cheese and serve!

Nice Icing

Ingredients: butter, icing sugar, red, brown, green and yellow food colouring, ready to roll fondant icing, white chocolate curls.

1) Make a batch of red buttercream by blending together 125g butter and 250g icing sugar. Colour bright red with the food colouring. Spread over the top of cake for the tomato base.

2) Use red ready to roll fondant icing and roll out to a long sausage shape. Roll out a long strip of brown fondant and put the red fondant on top. Now roll the brown fondant around the red fondant into one long sausage. Attach all around the edge of the cake to make a fondant crust that looks like a stuffed crust.

3) Colour ready rolled icing: red for pepperoni slices, green and yellow for peppers and cut into small shapes and place on top of the pizza cake. Add white chocolate curls for cheese.

Tropical Taste

Ingredients: Ready to roll red fondant icing, dried pineapple, ribbon sweets, desiccated coconut.

1) Roll out red ready to roll fondant icing so that it's slightly smaller than your cake, it doesn't have to be a perfect circle as it will look more realistic if the shape is fuzzy. Place over the cake and smooth down leaving a cake edge around the rim.

2) Top with chopped dried pineapple and wide fizzy ribbon sweets cut to look like pieces of ham.

3) Sprinkle over desiccated coconut to look like cheese.

Forget cake board, there's only one way to serve this pizza cake and that's in a (clean) pizza box!

If you're hosting a birthday party and want to combine the birthday pizza cake with a fun activity why not make individual sponge cakes (in smaller sizes so they're perfect for one) and get kids to decorate them themselves. Decant strawberry jam into bowls for the tomato base, and put out bowls of sweets that can be used to top the cakes that look like pizza.

It's fairly easy to adjust this cake to cater for people with allergies or vegan diets. Switch the regular flour for a gluten-free variety, and the butter and milk for a vegan-friendly alternative (water could also be used in place of the milk, just use slightly less). The three eggs could be replaced with one and a half mashed bananas, 12 tablespoons of applesauce or 12 tablespoons of silken tofu.

You can use anything you like for the decoration of this pizza cake recipe, depending on what you fancy. There's nothing  to say that your pizza even has to be topped with 'savoury' toppings. After all what birthday girl or boy will turn their nose up at a pizza covered in sweets and chocolate? Add chocolate spread to the base and then cover with sweets and chocolate treats.

The cake should serve 8-10 people.

You can make the sponges in advance, they'll keep for up to five days in an air-tight container. Once decorated the cake should last around two days.

If you have left overs you can slice them and cover them in two layers of cling film. Add a wrapping of foil and then place in the freezer for up to two months.