No matter whether the birthday is for someone who is six or sixty, a magnificent cake will help create an unforgettable memory. Any time you have to create a birthday masterpiece there are a couple of things to keep in mind: the celebrant's interests and your own abilities.

For non-bakers, consider getting yourself a cake decorating kit. These will have tools to help you create many different designs easily with your icing. Instead of simply writing "Happy Birthday _______", try to put some substance around it. A theme is a good idea. Many popular books, movies, and TV shows have toys, cards, and novelty items that can be used on a cake.

It is easy to make a basic rectangular cake, frost it green, make white, regularly spaced lines on it, and with a couple of plastic novelty toys you have a football field for the sports lover.

 Another easy sport cake is a round cake frosted white with red, curved, dotted lines to make a baseball.

If you have a bit more baking experience you may want to build the cake up a bit. Creating a completely edible landscape cake can be lots of fun. If your child is interested in science you can bake one rectangular cake, two dome cakes (one baked in a 4-liter pyrex bowl and the other in a 2-liter bowl), and cupcakes. The rectangular cake is frosted green (or any other color to make a landscape).

The dome cakes are placed on the rectangular cake, the largest first and the smaller on top of it, with a cupcake placed on top of the smaller cake. This creates a mountain or volcano that can be covered with chocolate frosting.

If you want it to be a volcano you can scoop out the top of the cupcake and use a red frosting or homemade candy lava to put in the top of the cupcake and run rivulets down the side.

Use toys to place it in a forest or city, or use different colored frosting to put it near a river. If you want to use vanilla frosting, it can become a winter scene with a ski hill. Cakes can be really versatile!

Technically oriented individuals can try to take it to the next level: animated cakes. These cakes have moving parts and work well with a theme based cake. For example, if your child loves fairies you can make a rectangular cake. Using icing and fondant cover it with flowers,  or other forest ground cover. A 30rpm motor will work with most things, but double check for yours. Place the motor inside half a plastic bottle covered in fondant to look like a stump. Use paper or light plastic fairies and attach them to the motor with thin wire to spin around the cake! You are limited only by your imagination.

Do you know, people on an average take 9 months before picking up any noteworthy cake decorating skill. Are you ready to spend so much time? if not click here to discover how you can be a cake decorating expert within  few short weeks.