Name: Butterfly Birthday Cake
Prep time: 30 min
Cook time: 50 min
Total time: 200 min
Ingredients: 600 g butter; 600 g castor sugar; 600 g self-raising flour; 10 eggs; 150 ml milk; ½ teaspoon salt; 1 ¼ teaspoon baking powder; 1 ⅔ teaspoon vanilla essence; Buttercream; Royal Icing; Fondant; Wilton food coloring in red (golden yellow, royal blue, and moss green)

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Looking for easy butterfly birthday cake ideas? Here is a simple birthday cake with butterfly design you can make.

This is a sheet cake, cut into a butterfly shape and decorated into a girly butterfly birthday cake. The top of the butterfly cake is covered in fondant, and the sides as well as the yellow, blue, green, black and orange icing that make up the butterfly wing design is in royal icing.

A butterfly shaped cake decorated in yellow, green, red and blue. — An easy butterfly birthday cake design

Made this butterfly birthday cake way back in 2007. This was one of the cakes I made very early in my cake decorating journey.

The cake was carved out of a 6 inches by 10 inches rectangle cake. I used a butterfly template which I drew by hand as a guide to cut the butterfly shaped cake. If you are not into drawing your own butterfly template, you can source for one from the internet. Look for 'butterfly coloring pages' and you will find lots of ideas that you can use as butterfly template for cake.

I baked the cake using my butter pound cake recipe which is vanilla flavored, but if you like you can also make a chocolate butterfly cake using my chocolate cake recipe here. To make the size of this cake, use the recipe provided for an 8 inches square chocolate cake.

The cake is decorated in fondant and royal icing. If you prefer the entire cake to be covered in fondant, you can always do so. Alternatively, you can omit the fondant and cover the butterfly cake entirely in buttercream for a buttercream butterfly birthday cake.

Overall, this is a fairly easy butterfly birthday cake to make and decorate. You can further customize the design on the wings as well as the colors used to decorate your butterfly cake. You can even turn this cake into a rainbow butterfly birthday cake by choosing rainbow icing colors to decorate the wings.

How to Make a Butterfly Birthday Cake

These were the supplies I used to make the butterfly birthday cake:

Cake - I baked a rectangle cake measuring 6.5" by 10" using my butter pound cake recipe. I baked two of these cakes and sandwiched them with buttercream.
Buttercream - I used vanilla buttercream to fill the cake. I also used buttercream to crumb coat the cake. Click here for my buttercream recipe.
Fondant - I used very little fondant on this cake. Only the top of the cake was covered in fondant. I used my homemade fondant. See how I made my own fondant here.
Royal icing - Royal icing was the main icing used for decorating the cake. I also used royal icing to decorate the sides of the cake. For the butterfly wings, I used Wilton gel colors in red, golden yellow, royal blue, and moss green. I also tinted some of the icing in black for the butterfly body.
Butterfly template - I searched the internet for a butterfly template, resized the image such that it would fit my rectangle cake, and printed it out.
Piping tips and piping bags - I used Wilton piping bags for this project. As for the tips, I used Wilton round tip #3 and star tip #16.

The butterfly template

First was the butterfly template. I drew the butterfly template by hand. For consistent sizing of the wings, fold your paper into 2 and draw one half size of the butterfly. Still keeping the paper folded, but the butterfly following the outline and then open up the fold. This way, you will get both sides of the wings and body is the exact same shape and size.
If you are not into drawing, you can get a butterfly template from your child's coloring books or simply get a template from the internet. Search for 'butterfly coloring pages' and you will find lots of pretty templates you can use for your cake. Do remember to resize the template to fit your cake before printing. Learn how to resize your templates with my easy tutorial here.

Baking and carving the birthday cake

Next was baking the birthday cake. I baked 2 rectangle cakes (6.5 inches by 10 inches), sandwiched both with buttercream. And then, using my prepared butterfly cake template, I carved the cake to make a butterfly shaped cake.
I then placed the carved cake on a cake board, and crumb coated it with a thin layer of buttercream.

Covering the birthday cake with fondant

Once the basics were done, I rolled out my white fondant to about ⅛ inch thick and again, using the same butterfly template I used for the cake, cut out the butterfly shape. I dusted the cut fondant with icing sugar and loosely rolled it into my rolling pin. This way, you can avoid the fondant form stretching and loosing its shape as you are lifting it.
Gently unroll the fondant piece onto the buttercream crumb coated cake and position it to fit onto the butterfly shaped cake.
If there is excess fondant on the sides, use a sharp knife to trim it off. If for some reasons the fondant piece is smaller than the cake, you can stretch it gently to cover the top of the cake entirely.

The birthday cake sides

Next was the sides of the butterfly birthday cake. For this, I used a star tip and white royal icing for the vertical lines of icing, all around the cake.

Decorating the butterfly wings

And then I went on to decorate the wings. I had royal icing tinted in red, blue, yellow, and green and used round piping tips. I piped everything freehand here (which is why the design is not exactly the same on both wings. Had I used a template, I would have achieved a consistent pattern on both the wings, but for some reason, I did not. And if you intend to make a similar butterfly birthday cake, it would help greatly if you mark the designs on the cake using either a toothpick or small knife before piping). I started with the outlines in yellow. I used a round piping tip and made medium-sized dots all around the butterfly border.
Next were the red and green dotted lines for the upper and lower wings. Again, I used round piping tips and made the medium-sized dots, following the shape formed by the yellow dots earlier as close as possible.

The butterfly body

And then I piped the butterfly body on the butterfly themed birthday cake. I also used a round tip, piped the outline, and then filled the inside with black icing in horizontal lines. Using the same black icing, I made two antennae for the butterfly on the cake board.
After that, I completed the rest of the butterfly wing design, piping the outlines first and then filling the insides. I also piped 2 yellow dots for the butterfly's eyes.

Butterfly cake antenna in black icing. — Butterfly themed cake - birthday cake with butterfly design

And that was how I decorated my easy butterfly shaped butterfly birthday cake.

Like this butterfly birthday cake idea and tutorial? Here are my other posts you might want to check out:

Recipe (Printable)

Here is the full printable version of my butterfly birthday cake recipe and decorating tutorial.

Butterfly Birthday Cake

Here is an easy butterfly birthday cake carved and shaped out of a sheet cake and decorated into a lovely, girly butterfly themed cake design.

5 from 1 vote

Print Pin Rate

Course: Dessert

Cuisine: American

Keyword: Butterfly Birthday Cake

Prep Time: 30 minutes

Cook Time: 50 minutes

Decorating time: 2 hours

Total Time: 3 hours 20 minutes

Yield: 1 6 inches by 10 inches butterfly shaped cake

Author: Priya Maha

Equipment

Butterfly paper template
Round piping tip #3
Star piping tip #16
Piping bags
Knife
Rolling Pin

Metric - US Customary

Ingredients

Cake

600 g butter
600 g castor sugar
600 g self-raising flour
10 eggs
150 ml milk
½ teaspoon salt
1 ¼ teaspoon baking powder
1 ⅔ teaspoon vanilla essence

Frosting

Buttercream
Royal Icing
Fondant
Wilton food coloring in red golden yellow, royal blue, and moss green

Metric - US Customary