1st Birthday Cake Decorating Idea: Cookie Cutter Shapes

Over the weekend we celebrated our youngest niece's first birthday. Ever since making the now famous (in our family) M&M cake for our nephew's 4th birthday, we've had fun tackling new and exciting cake ideas to bring along to the family birthday celebrations. For Chelsea's birthday, I used two different cookie cutters and a host of sprinkles to create a negative space shaped heart and sugary silver number 1.

We'd wanted to go with a number theme, but do something different than cover the cake with M&M's like we'd done last year for her brother's cake:

After whipping together a basic cake mix (any of your favorites will do), I did little digging around for "pinspiration," and came across several awesome ideas for how to decorate a cake top with sprinkles and cookie cutters — two things we have plenty of in this house!

I really liked the idea of using a large number with sprinkles around it to create negative space, but when digging through our giant box of cookie cutters, I realized our "number 1" shape was lacking in the appropriate size to make a big impact. Sulking and feeling a little defeated, I began digging through the rest of the cookie cutters in case something else might work — maybe I could spell out her name or do a series of different shapes. Just then, the giant heart cookie cutter appeared within the pile and all that's when it hit me — I could make the negative space with the heart and fill in the smaller number 1 inside!

My deflated internal dialogue then perked up to: I am brilliant. My neices and nephew will be blown away. Take THAT small "number 1" cookie cutter.

I first made the heart outline by placing the heart-shaped cookie cutter, sharp-side down, right on top of the frosted cake. I filled in a thick layer of sprinkles around the cutter, parsing them out the further away I got. To make sure they stuck into the icing, I even pressed them gently with the back of the small spoon I used to scoop them with, which was a big help.

Once happy with the outlining sprinkles, I place the number 1 shaped cookie cutter in the center of the heart and filled it with silver coated sugar sprinkles.

Definitely a satisfying movement removing the cookie cutters to reveal the end result!

Using cookie cutters and sprinkles like this could work for all sorts of decorating ideas — letters, numbers, shapes and more!

In the end, little Miss Chelsea seemed more interested in playing with gift bags, tissue paper and her giant number 1 — which was perfectly alright with us. Happy Birthday sweetheart!

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