DIY Cake Decorating Party for Kids

Plan your own DIY cake decorating party for kids with a free printable party planning checklist and decor ideas!

My daughter loves helping me bake, but really… she only does so she can help decorate the cookies, cakes, cupcakes… whatever! She loves to decorate with icing and sprinkles and has even checked books out of the library on the topic this past year. While she’s totally learning, it’s so much fun for her to play with. For her 8th birthday, she asked to have a cake decorating party. Heck yes, you can girlie!

In this post, I’m going to share about the DIY cake decorating party for kids we threw for her, plus I am going to share all the links to supplies we ordered to make it happen and a free printable checklist to plan your own cake decorating party easily.

For this party, we wanted to keep it pretty simple and pretty affordable. I already had most of the cake decorating supplies, but since we were going to have 6 kids decorating at once, I did purchase a few extra things. I’ll share more about supplies I’d recommend having down below, but first can we talk decor?

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Party decorations for a kids cake decorating party

For decorations, she picked a pastel rainbow colour scheme after she found a balloon garland kit at walmart in this palette. We bought the kit and added a mylar 8 (these ones you just blow up with air) and some paper fringe garlands hung vertically underneath to complete the backdrop. I couldn’t find the exact kit we used on Amazon, but this one looks beautiful too! We also use an electric balloon pump to inflate balloons and it’s such a time (and breath!) saver. I bought it a few years ago and honestly it’s been such a huge help.

We decided to match the party cake to the balloon colours, we iced the cake with plain white icing, then mixed up some icing in pastel colours. You can use gel food coloring to tint icing without making it runny. We used a round icing spatula to paint this on and I love how this turned out!

I found this mylar 8 balloon cake topper at the dollar store and some glittery candles at Walmart. One fun thing she wanted to try on the cake is to fill it with sprinkles. We just did this with the party cake, just using a champagne flute to ‘cut out’ the centre of the cake. It was such a fun surprise for her to share with her friends as we cut into the cake.

That’s really all we did for decorations at this party- it was so simple, and it kept the focus on the activity.

DIY Custom Apron Party Gifts for a Cake Decorating Party

For party favors or guest gifts, we skipped the grab bags and had the girls each decorate a cake to take home as their treat plus the guests customized aprons and chef hats for to wear for the cake decorating and take home as well. I didn’t get any pictures of this portion of the activity as I was hands on helping them weed vinyl :)

We ordered these plain white aprons with chef hats from Amazon and customized them using holographic iron on vinyl cut out with my Cricut. I cut a floral monogram for the front of each apron and then A selected some other designs to cut smaller for the tops of the chef hats.

We had the designs cut to size, but not weeded when guests arrived. They weeded their own designs (I helped with the intricate pieces) and then we ironed them on to their aprons using a Cricut Easy Press. They were really excited to take these home!

If you don’t have a Cricut, you can actually order monogram holographic iron on sheets precut right here.

Hosting a kids cake decorating activity

For the cake decorating, we had set the table with a small cake for each of the guests. We used a 6″x3″ Round cake pan to make these. I made the cakes using box cake mix to save some time and made half chocolate, half confetti cake so guests could choose. We did the base icing / crumb coat the morning of so the kids weren’t worrying about getting crumbs in their icing. This makes it so much easier for kids to decorate cakes!

We used this buttercream icing recipe. If you have a busy week before your party, you can always make your cakes ahead of time and freeze them (wrap in plastic food wrap). Just make sure to thaw them out before the kids start icing.

We identified the chocolate and confetti cakes by the cardboard cake bases they were on. We just picked these up at Michaels with a coupon but if we’d planned ahead we would have ordered some from Amazon (like this).

We colored icing in the pastel colours to match the decor. We put the icing in bags (I bought proper icing bags instead of using parchment triangles to make it easier for the kids to decorate with) and had some basic tips on the bags using couplers. Again, use gel food coloring to tint icing without making it runny.

They weren’t old enough to really get into icing tips/what they’re for so I had them set up with pink having a petal tip, green having a leaf tip and the others having star and round tips. I put an elastic around the back of the bag which isn’t fool proof with icing but it does help minimize spills.

We also set out sprinkles for the cakes (A picked out different kinds she was most excited about like these and these) and I borrowed some extra icing spatulas so we would have a few for the kids to use to spread icing around. I prefer the round tip offset spatulas for icing.

Having cups of warm water at either end of the table to dip the spatulas into and paper towel for each guest to wipe excess icing off your spatula was helpful as well.

The other thing we had was a cup full of gel icing writers, A insisted on these and a few of the girls used them to write their names on their cakes. This is what these look like, they come in packs at the grocery store.

After each guest was done their cake, we took a photo of them holding it to send to their parents (these are my kids with their finished cake).

The kids had so much fun with this activity, I was… biting my tongue at the piiiiles of icing and sprinkles but they really enjoyed themselves which was the whole point! After the party guests were done, we let our younger two boys take a turn and they really piled the icing high ;P

To make planning your own cake decorating party for kids easier, I’ve put together a little planning checklist with room to write down all your decor/snacks as well. You can grab it by entering your email below!

That’s it! It was such a fun party for my 9 year old girl and her friends- they got to craft, bake (kind of) and they were so proud of their creations to take home. I would definitely call this one a win.

Supplies for a Cake Decorating Party

• Sprinkles: I love these and these
• Offset Icing spatula
• Cake Boards
• Balloon Garland
• 6″ Cake pan for smaller cakes
• Icing bags, tips, and couplers
• We use this icing recipe
• Gel Icing
• Gel food coloring
• Electric balloon pump
• Blank aprons and chef hats
• Holographic iron on vinyl + Cricut to Cut OR If you don’t have a Cricut, you can actually order monogram holographic iron on sheets pre-cut right here

This is the first year I’ve been able to do a girls party theme! A is a twin and for the first 8 years of their life, they had joint birthday parties. This year, they asked to have their own parties, E had a Nerf themed party and was adamant it wasn’t fancy like Pinterest- ha! We gathered boxes to make Nerf bases in the back yard, ordered pizza and had some target balloons for him using a paint marker.

This is all the decorations we did, but I wanted to share anyways ;) Instead of grab bags for this one, we gave the kids each small nerf guns and ordered a giant bag of off brand bullets. So much fun!

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