Eat More Cake: 5 DIY Ways to Take a Store-Bought Cake from Average to Awesome

I love coming up with new recipes to share around here, but some of my absolute favorite ‘recipes’ are only semi-homemade…Buy the cake add your own homemade frosting, buy the ice cream make your own caramel sauce, etc, etc.

They’re doable for pretty much anyone (whether you bake or not) and still have a homemade vibes / taste about them. SO, today I’m sharing 5 DIY ways to top store-bought cakes (in this case angel food cake because… summer!) in 5 minutes flat.

If you’ve been meaning to tackle some cake making of your own, try this one first, and then work your way up to cakes from scratch. Deal? Deal!

Here are 5 DIY ways to take a store-bought cake from average to awesome…

Before we jump in, two quick things. One…all of the angel food cakes are from Trader Joes and they’re only $4 each! So you cake make one of these cake for a total of $5-7 (including the toppings)! Not bad, right? Two…all of the cakes in this post use melted chocolate as the ‘icing’ to make things easy. But you can also use whipped cream, buttercream icing, a homemade donut glaze, etc, etc.

Now that you have the lowdown, here’s the cakes breakdown…

1. Cookie Monster. I’ve been using Williams-Sonoma cookies a lot lately because they’re iced so well and taste delicious – used the daisy cookies that come in this packaged set for one of the cakes. BUT it would be just as fun to ice your own cookies first! And I just so happen to have a recipe for iced sugar cookies too.

2. Strawberry Fields Forever. I love on angel food cake – tastes super fresh for summer! Start with melted chocolate OR fresh fruit whipped cream (mix in strawberries instead of blueberries, like the recipe calls for) and top with bite-size pieces of strawberry (sliced or diced).

3. Macarons Maniac. As sacrilege as it may seem, I love mixing in pieces of macarons to baked goods like donuts, and now cakes. If you can’t bear to chop them up, use them whole and they’ll look just as pretty.

4. Edible flowers power. Edible flowers, I just can’t quit you! So, I added some pretty chamomile flowers to one of the cakes and the result, with pink chocolate icing is pretty in pink.

5. Candy addict. Candy will have a special place in my heart from now until eternity. So it only made sense to top one of the cakes with some of favorite pastel rainbow candies from Sugarfina.

Photography Amelia Tatnall
Styling Brittni Mehlhoff

Are you a cake lover? Which DIY topping is your favorite?