DIY Smash Cake and Cake Stands

If you haven't noticed, we've been living pretty minimally these days. It's hard to go over the top with decorations and outfits when you have a tight budget. I've been determined to make everything perfect for the babies first birthday, despite low funds.

My favorite first birthday tradition is the cake smash. Since their party is not on their actual birthday, I decided to let them have a cake smash on their birthday, and a small cupcake on the day of their party. As I was getting everything ready for the cake smash, I realized I couldn't put the cakes directly on the ground. A paper plate would look tacky and a glass plate could break. I looked online for prices of miniature cake stands and quickly decided that wasn't in the budget. So, off to Pinterest I went. I stole the idea to make my own cake stands using plates and bowls. It could not have been any easier! I spent $4 total at the Dollar Store on one pack of small plates and three plastic bowls.

You simply hot glue the base of the bowl onto the back of the plate. Within two minutes, I had three miniature cake stands that cost just over $1 each!

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Of all the birthday details and decorations, I felt most confident about baking the smash cakes. I baked them in my five inch round pans. (One cake recipe only made enough for two cakes. The second recipe made the third cake and 24 mini cupcakes.)

After the cakes cooled I leveled them. You could either cut the dome off with a serrated knife or use a cake leveler. I did not apply a crumb coat because the rose decorations would be more than enough icing on the cake.

Because I wanted to cover the cake in roses, I had to make a LOT of icing for these small cakes. I doubled my usual buttercream icing (double recipe: 1 cup butter, 1 cup shortening, tbsp of vanilla, 8 cups of powdered sugar). I tinted half of it pink, the other half blue. I used 1M tip to make the roses.

Once you fill your piping bag halfway, you simply swirl the icing onto the cake in a circular motion until you have roses. After swirling the roses on the sides and top of the cake, you'll be left with open spaces.

To cover them, you can either overlap more roses on top, or simply add swirls to fill in the gaps. FYI, it would not look great if you just filled it with dollops of icing because it would look like roses and stars. Try to swirl in the same direction as the roses so it looks less obvious.

Here are the final cakes on their cake stands. I already had all the supplies for the cakes since I bake so much, but you could buy all the ingredients and a 1M tip from a craft store for less than $20. If you didn't have small cake pans you could use a sheet pan and cut circles out or use ramekins.

I cannot wait for the babies to tear these cakes apart!