Everyone loves unicorns…even if they won’t admit it. And everyone will love this unicorn birthday cake when you whip it out on your favorite person’s special day! It’s cute, magical, and easy to bake up!
We don’t think we’ve ever met anyone who didn’t think unicorns were at least a teeny-tiny bit awesome. They’re beloved by little girls everywhere, definitely, but these days even grown-ups are getting into the magical aesthetic. Heck, we’ve even known a few younger boys who love these fantasy critters! Even over dragons! It’s really hard not to adore a shiny pony with a shinier horn. Look at My Little Pony…super popular!
That’s why, today, we’re going to show you how to make this adorable unicorn birthday cake! It’s a vanilla cake with some simple decor that we’ll go through step-by-step. No need to get something like this professionally done. You can make it by yourself at home by following our tutorial, and you’ll have a lot of fun doing it, too!
How To Make A Unicorn Cake
Here’s our easy-peasy tutorial for baking a seriously adorable rainbow unicorn cake!
You will need…
- Your favorite vanilla cake recipe: Use a store-bought mix…or follow our own tried-and-true from-scratch easy vanilla cake recipe. We highly recommend it!
- Buttercream frosting: This is another ingredient that you can grab from the store or follow our simple buttercream recipe that results in creamy smooth frosting every time!
- Buttercream food gel color: Adding gel coloring to your buttercream will help you create all the pretty colors in the unicorn’s mane. You can use whatever colors you (or your special person) enjoy, but we used pastel blue, pink, and purple.
- Piping bag and piping tips: You’ll use these to decorate your cake, of course. (Gotta make that gorgeous frosting mane!) In particular, we used the Wilton 6B, 1M, and 32 piping tips for the cake you see in the photos. If you want to copy ours, get those tips!
- Sprinkles: For decoration! To mimic our photos, you’ll want to grab our Pastel Quin Sprinkles Mix.
- Flower toppers: Unicorns need flowers to make themselves even more magical (trust us, we asked…ha!) and so your cake needs flowers, too. Our flower toppers are the perfect decor for your unicorn.
- Unicorn horn, ears, and eyes: You can generally find unicorn-themed cake toppers online or at your local party store. We got our ears, horn, and eyes from Amazon, but you can also find them on Etsy (or again, locally!).
Step 1: Bake your vanilla cake base.
As we said above, we recommend our vanilla cake recipe, which gives you wonderful from-scratch cake. (It’s easy, too!) You’ll want to divide your batter equally into 3 separate pans. For this cake, we made 3 6-inch layers, each dyed a different pastel color.
Step 2: Prep the frosting and frost the cake.
Wait for the cake to cool, and split your buttercream frosting into 4 bowls. Dye 3 separate bowls a different pastel color. (You should have white, pastel blue, pastel purple, and pastel pink frosting.) Once the cake has cooled, stack and layer the cake. Apply an even coat of undyed, white buttercream to the outside of the cake. Then let the cake sit in the fridge for about 20 minutes.
Step 3: Piping bag time!
Put your dyed frosting into 3 separate piping bags, each fitted with a separate tip. You’ll be using this to make your unicorn’s “mane” from rosettes. Again, we used Wilton 6B, 1M, and 32 piping tips, though it doesn’t matter which tip you assign to which color! Take the cake from the fridge and pipe a single rosette in the center top of the side of the cake. We’ll use this rosette to mark the front of your unicorn.
Step 4: Add some color by creating your unicorn’s mane!
Using a knife, gently mark a line at an angle next to the rosette. This will help you keep things neat when piping the unicorn’s mane. Check out our cake photos to see what we mean! Be sure to leave enough room for the unicorn eyes, which you’ll place below the first rosette later. Now, pipe varied rosettes with different colored frosting to create the mane. Cover the top of the cake and the side at the angle line.
Step 5: Top your unicorn cake off with some finishing touches!
Carefully add your unicorn eyes, ears, and horn. Scatter some Pastel Quin Sprinkles over the cake wherever you see fit, and gently place the flower toppers into the mane at random points.
…and that’s it! Enjoy this beautiful unicorn cake!
Unicorn Birthday Cake: FAQs
Here are some questions we’ve been asked about our adorable unicorn birthday cake!
How many servings does this rainbow cake make?
Depending on the size of your cake, it should total up to about 15 slices, give or take! We made a 3-layer 6” cake.
How long does it take to make a rainbow unicorn cake?
This will depend on what recipe for vanilla cake you use. (Again, we recommend following our simple vanilla cake recipe.) We can say that adding the sprinkles and other decorations takes about 40 minutes!
Do you have other rainbow sprinkles to use on this cake?
Absolutely! While we recommend the Quins we linked above, you can also use:
Did you enjoy this rainbow unicorn cake?
For kids and grown-ups alike, there’s no party quite like a unicorn party, right?! Feel free to leave your comments down below on our unicorn birthday cake tutorial. Did you have any trouble? Did it go smoothly for you? Who’s the unicorn-lover in your family? We love hearing all your thoughts!
More cakes at Sweets & Treats!
You may think that there are times that don’t call for cakes…but you’d be wrong! (Just kidding!) Seriously, though, fun cakes make any occasion worthwhile, and we have a ton of recipes here on the blog:
Check out our birthday cake roundup too!