20 Easy Unicorn Cakes Anyone Can Make

This is the design most people picture: a smooth white two-layer cake with a mane of buttercream rosettes cascading from the top down one side. Tint three bowls of buttercream pastel pink, lilac and teal, then spoon them side by side into one piping bag fitted with a Wilton 1M tip so every rosette comes out softly blended. Start piping at the top back of the cake and work forward and down in overlapping swirls, tucking a few small stars into the gaps with a Wilton 21 tip. Add a gold ice cream cone horn and pipe closed lashes with melted dark chocolate. Rosettes are the most forgiving decoration there is — every wobble just looks like more hair.

Buy a plain white-iced madeira or vanilla celebration cake from the supermarket and decorate it at home in about 20 minutes — no oven involved. Make one small batch of buttercream (250 g butter to 500 g icing sugar), split it into three colours and pipe a mane with a Wilton 1M tip straight onto the existing icing. Push a sprinkle-covered sugar cone in for the horn, add halved marshmallows dipped in pink sanding sugar for ears, and pipe lashes with black gel icing. This is the best route for busy parents the night before a party, and nobody will ever ask where the sponge came from.

Keep the entire mane white — rosettes, swirls and stars piped with Wilton 1M and 6B tips — and let gold do all the talking. Mix edible gold lustre dust with a few drops of clear alcohol or lemon extract to make a paint, then brush it over the horn, the insides of the ears and the piped lashes. A single blush-pink rosette or two tucked into the mane stops it looking flat. Because there is no colour matching to worry about, this version is surprisingly hard to get wrong, and it suits christenings and grown-up birthdays as well as kids' parties.

Arrange 24 cupcakes in the outline of a unicorn head on a large board, using a template drawn on baking paper underneath as your guide. Pipe swirls of pastel buttercream with a Wilton 2D tip across the whole shape so the surface reads as one continuous cake, then add a cone horn and a fondant ear at the top. There is no levelling, stacking, filling or carving, and serving means each child simply pulls a cupcake off. Bake the cupcakes at 180°C (350°F) for 18–20 minutes and make sure they are completely cool before piping, or the swirls will slump.

A tinted white chocolate drip gives a bakery-modern look with one simple technique. Melt 100 g white chocolate with 40 ml warm double cream, tint it pink with an oil-based or gel colour, and let it cool to about 32°C (90°F) — roughly body temperature — before use. The cake must be fridge-cold so the drips set as they run: spoon the ganache around the top edge of a chilled, smoothly frosted cake, nudging a little over the side every few centimetres. Test two drips on the back first to check the flow, then finish with a crown of mane swirls and the horn on top only. Thick, slow drips mean the ganache is too cool; thin racing drips mean it is too warm.

A semi-naked finish — a thin coat of buttercream scraped back so the sponge shows through in patches — removes the hardest part of cake decorating: getting a flawless smooth coat. Crumb coat the stacked layers, chill for 30 minutes at fridge temperature, then apply a second thin coat and scrape most of it off with a metal cake scraper. Add a simple gold horn, small piped mane and a few dried edible flowers or fresh flowers with wrapped stems. This style pairs beautifully with a lemon or Victoria-sponge-style cake and suits garden parties where perfect pastel gloss would look out of place.

The outside stays classic white; the wow moment comes when you cut it and reveal rainbow layers. Split the base recipe batter into four bowls, weigh them so each holds the same amount, and tint with gel food colouring — liquid colouring adds too much water and thins the batter. Bake the thinner layers at 180°C (350°F) for just 18–20 minutes, checking early because shallow layers overbake fast. Stack in rainbow order with buttercream between each and frost as normal. Kitchen Fun with My 3 Sons uses this trick on a six-layer cake, but four layers from one batch is far easier and still gets gasps.

Skip the mane entirely: a smooth white cake with just a gold horn, two small ears and delicately piped closed lashes is the fastest "grown-up" unicorn design there is. The one skill it needs is a smooth finish, so use a metal scraper for the sides and then glide over the top with an offset spatula dipped in hot water and wiped dry. Pipe the lashes with melted dark candy melts or black royal icing through a Wilton 3 round tip, keeping each lash to one curved stroke. Because there are so few elements, practise the lashes on baking paper first — you only get one go on the cake.

When you need to feed 20–24 people, a 23x33 cm (9x13 inch) traybake beats a stacked cake for speed and transport. Double the base recipe, bake at 180°C (350°F) for 35–40 minutes, and frost the flat top right in the tin. Pipe the unicorn face across one corner — swirled 2D-tip mane flowing toward the centre, a small cone horn laid at an angle, piped lashes — and scatter sprinkles over the rest. There is no stacking, no structural worry and no cake board balancing on a car seat. Cut it into squares at the party and the decorated corner pieces go to the birthday child first.

Turn the cake into a little sky scene: white marshmallow "clouds" pressed around the base, a rainbow arching next to the horn and a swirled pastel mane above. Make the rainbow by kneading and pressing thin ropes of coloured fondant together, bending the strip over a mug handle and leaving it to dry overnight so it holds its arch on a cocktail-stick support. Mini marshmallows piped in place with a dab of buttercream give the cloud texture in seconds. This version works especially well for younger children because every element is soft, sweet and safe to grab.

Swap the pastels for full-saturation red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple and the same design suddenly reads loud and joyful. Tint the buttercream at least an hour ahead, because gel colours deepen noticeably over 30–60 minutes and you want to judge the final shade, not the fresh one. Use six small piping bags and give each colour one or two big Wilton 1M swirls rather than blending them, so every colour stays crisp. One honest warning for parents: heavily dosed red and black buttercream will temporarily stain tongues and teeth, so keep those shades for accents rather than whole rosettes.

This is the cheapest way to make a cake look expensive, and it needs zero piping skill on the sides. Frost the cake in white, then dab small random strokes of two or three pastel-tinted buttercreams over it with a palette knife. Hold a cake scraper against the side and turn the cake once — the colours smear together into a soft watercolour wash. Stop after one or two passes; over-scraping blends everything into a single muddy tone. Finish with a small crown of swirls, the horn and lashes, and let the dreamy sides carry the design.

Borrow the vintage heart cake trend and pipe it in unicorn colours: shell borders, overpiped scallops and pearl dots in blush pink and lilac around a heart-shaped cake, with a gold horn and lashes in the centre. Bake the base recipe in a 20 cm (8 inch) heart tin for 30–35 minutes at 180°C (350°F), or carve a gentle point into a round layer. Pipe the borders with a Wilton 4B open star tip top and bottom, then run a second contrasting line over the first — the layered overpiping is exactly what hides shaky hands. It photographs like a bakery window and costs nothing extra to make.

A bundt tin solves the two things beginners fear most: layering and frosting the sides. Bake the base recipe in a greased and floured 10-cup bundt at 180°C (350°F) for 40–45 minutes, cool completely, then pour over a thick pastel glaze made from 250 g icing sugar and 3–4 tablespoons of milk. Here is the trick nobody mentions: the hole in the middle holds an upside-down ice cream cone horn perfectly upright with no supports. Drizzle two more thin glaze colours over the first, add sprinkles down one side as the mane, and tuck fondant ears beside the horn.

A 10–15 cm (4–6 inch) two-layer mini is perfect for first-birthday smash photos, and one third of the base recipe batter makes both layers. The small canvas is genuinely easier: the whole mane is only five or six swirls, one small cone or fondant horn, and two dots of ears. If you want less sugar for a baby, frost it with stabilised whipped cream or whipped cream cheese frosting and keep the cake chilled until the moment of the photoshoot. Bake mini layers for 20–24 minutes at 180°C (350°F) and check early, because small tins overbake quickly.

This flat method, popularised by Hello Yummy, needs just one 25 cm (10 inch) round cake and no stacking at all. Cut a wedge from one side of the cooled cake, then split that wedge into two pieces: one becomes the horn, the other the ear, arranged around the round "head" on a large board. Freeze the cake for 30 minutes before cutting so the knife leaves clean, low-crumb edges. Frost everything white with an offset spatula, pipe golden rings across the horn piece, and add a piped mane along one edge of the face. Because it lies flat, it travels in any box and cuts like a regular cake.

An edible wafer or icing-sheet unicorn topper costs £3–4 (about $5) online and turns any frosted cake into a unicorn cake in five minutes. Frost the cake, let the buttercream firm up for 15 minutes so the surface is set but slightly tacky, then lay the topper on — applying it to wet frosting makes it wrinkle and bleed. Pipe a ring of stars around the edge with a Wilton 1M tip in one pastel colour to frame it. Keep one of these toppers in the cupboard as a rescue plan: when the piped mane goes wrong at 9 pm, you scrape it off and still serve a unicorn.

Instead of juggling three colours, use one colour in three strengths — baby pink, rose and deep raspberry, for example. Divide the buttercream into three bowls and add one, two, then four toothpick-dabs of the same gel colour. Pipe the darkest swirls at the bottom of the mane and fade lighter toward the horn, so the mane reads like naturally flowing hair. Because every shade already harmonises, there are no clashing-colour decisions to make, which makes this the safest mane for a first-time decorator who wants more than plain pastels.

The fault line design is a deliberate "mistake" that hides real ones. Press a 4–5 cm band of pastel sprinkles around the middle of a crumb-coated, chilled cake, then pipe and smooth buttercream above and below the band, leaving a ragged-edged strip of sprinkles exposed like a cracked-open fault. Brush the broken edges with gold lustre paint to sharpen the line. Chill for 20 minutes between the sprinkle layer and the final coat so the scraper does not drag sprinkles through the clean buttercream. Top with a small mane and horn, and the eye goes straight to the glittering seam rather than any imperfect frosting.

For summer birthdays, skip the oven entirely. Soften 2 litres of vanilla ice cream for 10 minutes, ripple through pink and purple gel colouring with a knife, press it into a cling-film-lined 20 cm (8 inch) springform tin and freeze for at least 6 hours or overnight. Unmould, then decorate fast with a mane of stabilised whipped cream (whip 300 ml double cream with 2 tablespoons icing sugar and 1 tablespoon mascarpone so it holds piping), a cone horn and sprinkles, working in two short bursts with a freezer break between. Return it to the freezer and move it to the fridge 10 minutes before serving so it slices without shattering.

The fridge is your co-decorator: chill the cake for 30 minutes after the crumb coat, after the final coat and before transport, and every step gets easier. Use gel food colouring, never liquid — gels give strong pastels from a toothpick-dab without thinning the buttercream. One Wilton 1M tip handles about 90 percent of these designs, so buy that before anything else, and practise swirls on baking paper then scrape the buttercream back into the bowl. Make the buttercream 2–3 days ahead and store it airtight in the fridge, then re-whip it for two minutes before using. Finally, a ready-made horn-and-ears topper set costs under £10 and removes the only genuinely fiddly component.

Frosting a warm cake is the number-one failure: the buttercream melts, slides and tears crumbs everywhere, so cool layers fully — about an hour on a rack — or chill them. Adding liquid food colouring by the teaspoon makes buttercream soupy; if it happens, rescue it with extra sifted icing sugar, 50 g at a time. Do not skip the crumb-coat chill, and do not overfill piping bags — half full gives you control, a bulging bag gives you hand cramp and burst seams. Making a fondant horn on party morning never works because fondant needs one to two days to dry hard; use an ice cream cone or a bought topper instead. And always chill the finished cake before the car journey, held flat in the footwell, not on a seat.