Spot The Cake

Decorating cakes can be a tricky business, and a very slippery slope indeed. Those cakes are getting bigger and more ornate every minute. But sometimes, icing alone isn't enough (I can't believe I just said that, but it's occasionally true). You want impact. Preferably, without sacrificing taste (fondant, anybody?) or spending the next millennium carefully arranging delicate and impossible components just so. It's not just me, is it?

Which is why I love this cake...

Picture: Small Town Beatnik on Flickr

Ice cake. Add M&Ms. It's just so terribly, terribly simple. And so amazingly effective. The random mix of different sizes is the thing that really makes it. It's a little bit sophisticated, but still friendly and inviting you to eat it and not just admire it. And isn't blowing raspberries at rustic bakers with artful curlicues and what-nots - it's the kind of thing even the stickiest-fingered among us feel like we could happily do without ending up gibbering in a corner of the kitchen, covered in icing sugar. It definitely says party, but doesn't look like it's out of place as soon as you're past primary school. Crazy, I know, for a cake to say quite so much - it's just M&Ms after all...

But those rainbow coloured polka dots can be taken to a whole other level of precision and detail.

Picture: via Dessert Girl; cake from Lochel's Bakery

It's still got some very strong traditional elements, but those spots are still shouting party. I'm not sure that you could have a cake like this and not have fun.

But maybe not as much fun as this one...

Cake: Almost Bourdain Kit Kat and jelly bean cake (and, not that it needs any justification for a cake so tasty-looking, but it was for somebody still in primary school! Although I'd cheerfully go for one of those for my next birthday, given half a chance...)

Because, when it all comes down to it, you can't go wrong with a big pile of candy!