My in-laws invited us to a last-minute birthday dinner, and I offered to bring the cake. On short notice, some people would drop $60 on a pretty cake at the nearest bakery. Now, birthday cakes are very important in my family, but I’ve never set foot in a bakery because paying for baked goods I know I can make for a fraction of the cost bothers me. I bought a $5 cake at the grocery store. The $15 cakes were equally ugly, so it didn’t pay to upgrade.

I didn’t have time to bake a cake—and that is always the cheapest way to go. But I think I did a good job of dressing up the ugly store-bought cake—here’s the Before and After and the details are below the photo:

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How to fix an ugly store-bought cake:

1. Pick the least ugly cake possible, preferably with chocolate or white icing.
2. Buy berries—whichever berries are on sale, and buy as many as your budget allows.
3. Use leftover party and baking supplies you’ve got at home to decorate the cake.

Get creative to keep the cake fix-up cheap:

For this cake, I spent $4 on two packs of strawberries.

• In summer the same strawberries would have cost just $1 a pack, and blackberries, blueberries, raspberries, etc. are often on sale for 88 cents for 6-ounce packs.

I had a cup of heavy whipping cream in the fridge so I made stabilized whipped cream (recipe below) so technically that added another 87 cents. ($1.74 per pint of cream at my Winco.)

• To make stabilized whipped cream that will stay fluffy for days, whip in a teaspoon of vanilla instant pudding for each cup of cream, along with the sugar and vanilla.

The rest of the decorations are items I had on hand: a large glass Christmas platter (you can’t see the snowman design—it’s under the cake), the “Happy Birthday” sign and pink candle left over from Jameson’s birthday party, two white birthday candles, and paper flowers Jameson made (poached from their vase in the kitchen).

• Dollar Tree usually has combo packs with birthday candles and a little cake decoration, so pop in there if you can, rather than buying expensive cake decorations at the grocery store.

Details on this $5 birthday cake makeover:

I bought a six-inch diameter cake for $5 from the grocery store bakery. The birthday girl wanted white cake, and that was the only white cake in the store. It had blobs of white icing and multi-colored round sprinkles on the top (a few) and the sides (a lot).

Yes, I could have taken the cake to the party as-is in its plastic bubble, but the way I was raised, everyone gets a beautiful birthday cake, every year, no exceptions. 

I grabbed two packs of out of season strawberries that were on sale. They were the least-red strawberries I’ve ever seen (it being January and all) but I didn’t have time to be picky.

At home, I scrounged in my cabinet to find odds and ends of party and baking decorations:

• A large glass platter.
• A cup of heavy cream left over from Christmas.
• Sugar, vanilla pudding mix, and vanilla from the pantry for the whipped cream.
• A cupcake frosting tip and a quart size ziploc bag.
• The little “Happy Birthday” plastic sign that came with the candles from my daughter’s birthday cake.
• One pink candle, and two white candles.
• Jameson’s paper flowers.

This cake makeover took me about 30 minutes because I’m Type-A; a normal person could bust it out in about 5 minutes.

I washed and dried the strawberries, scraped every single sprinkle off the cake, smoothed it out, made whipped cream, covered the top of the cake with the whipped cream, topped that with a couple strawberries, the Happy Birthday sign, and the three candles, cut a few fanned strawberries to put on the platter, and used the rest of the whole strawberries to surround the cake on the platter. I poked in the paper flowers and we headed to the party.

Steps to give any ugly store-bought cake an extreme makeover:

• Transfer the cake to a nice platter (glass, metallic, wood, or even a large wooden cutting board.)
• Scrape off anything ugly, like blobs of garish frosting or sprinkles.
• Smooth the cake with the back of a table knife warmed with hot water (or an offset spatula if you’re fancy), or a damp paper towel.
• Wipe the platter clean from frosting smears and crumbs.
• Top the cake with berries, decorations, and candles.
• Surround the cake with berries.

How to do a $0 cake makeover:

I had to buy the berries but you can do a cake makeover for free if you have fresh flowers or berries, lemon leaves, star jasmine, etc. growing at home.

If you don’t have a platter use a wood cutting board, a casserole dish flipped over, or an Amazon box covered in wrapping paper (cut off one side, or leave the box whole to make a raised cake platform).

• My grandma wraps aluminum foil around the large cutting board that slides into the kitchen cabinets for large cakes—that or a large box works for displaying a Costco cake or sheet cake.

No matter how much time, money, or effort you put into fixing an ugly store bought cake, you can make that cake look 100% better just by getting it out of its plastic bubble and onto a platter.

Consider building a cache of party supplies and multi-use serving trays that can be used to display birthday cakes. You can find items cheap at Dollar Tree or discount stores like Ross. I’ve saved some items on my Amazon Idea List here: Cake Ready

I don’t do sponsored posts! I do use affiliate links—that means your price doesn’t change and I get a kickback from Amazon, etc. Using my links helps keep All Day Mom sponsor-free so you know you’ll always get honest advice. I recommend you check Rakuten first for current Amazon categories that offer cash back (Rakuten: sign up here for $10 bonus or check Amazon cash back offers on Rakuten here) and if there is not a cash back offer there, please consider using my Amazon link here for your shopping. Thank you!”

Read all the frugal tips posts on All Day Mom here!