an easy way to upgrade a regular sheet cake
If you know my son, you know he is obsessed with Monster Jam, everything. Monster Jam trucks big and small, T-shirts, video games, theme songs, you name it... If it involves Monster Jam, he loves it! So it came as no surprise to me when he requested a Monster Jam birthday party. What did come as a surprise though, was that no one sold this type of cake! I love experimenting and trying out new cakes, but I just didn't have the time or money this birthday to invest in an extravagant cake attempt. When I found the only Monster Jam cakes/decorations
available were sugar sheet prints, I thought it would be a perfect occasion to
put this experiment to the test. I planned to buy a regular store-bought
sheet cake and transform it into a special Monster Jam birthday cake.
Once you decide on the size of your sugar sheet, you can pick out your sheet cake. I couldn't find a cake that had nothing in the center, so this was the best I could do. If you're able to find one without any decorations in the center of the cake, you're golden! This will be the easiest option to place the sheet directly in the center. You can cut and trim the sugar sheet with a regular pair of kitchen shears to fit the size of the opening/top.
If you find a cake that is mostly open on top with just a few decorations, you can easily remove those with an angled spatula or knife. I had an accident and pulled too much off one of the balloons (the cake was very cold and I only had a few hours to finish before the party) so I ended up scraping off the whole top layer. You definitely don't have to be this extreme.. but I knew I could fix it and there was no salvaging the dent in the top that I made from scraping too much.
I just scraped everything off and put it into a bowl and mixed it together. I accidentally got some cake/cake crumbs so the color was a little off but it worked out in the long run... If you can avoid it, definitely try to not scrape the actual cake off. But at the end of the day no one is really going to notice you got a few crumbs in the repurposed frosting, so don't stress about it.
I just so happened to have some extra cream cheese frosting in the fridge from my husband's birthday cake and used those left overs to frost the top of the cake. If you don't have extra frosting laying around, just spread the repurposed frosting over the top of the cake.
You don't have to pipe a border or anything fancy, as long as you create
a smooth flat surface for your sugar sheet, you will be good to go!
Once you get the top of your cake frosted, gently place your sugar sheet on top, trying to keep it as smooth and flat as possible. I used two hands to place on top of the cake, allowing the center of the sheet to make contact first. Once I got the sheet connected in the center, I slowly spread it out to the sides to reduce air bubbles and texture between the sheet and the cake. I then trimmed the bottom edge that hung over and made the sheet fit just in the center.
Since I had extra cream cheese frosting to smooth on the top of my cake, I was able to pipe a design with the repurposed frosting from the original top of the cake. I just placed it in a piping bag and did a seashell border around the sugar sheet. I then repeated this process around the bottom edge of the cake to match the top. I picked this cake in particular because of the sprinkles. I knew I had the same ones at home (Wilton brand) and could top the piped design to match the sprinkle sides made by the store.
There is the finished result! What do you think? I was surprised at how easy it was to transform a store bought cake into a personalized birthday theme cake. There are tons of options online for different characters and themes in the form of sugar sheets. Have fun and don't forget to share with me your creations! I can't wait to see what you come up with!
Like the Just A Struggle Bus Mom blog? Make sure you click the button below to subscribe to my email newsletters! Stay in the know of recipes, things to do & see, local finds, kid activities, holiday inspiration, and beauty tips, tricks, tutorials and techniques!