A birthday cake is an essential part of any birthday celebration and there are numerous ways in which you can make the cake extra-special. Birthday cakes can be made much more exciting and fun with some easy tricks and ideas. Cake Design and Decorating Ideas Homemade birthday cakes always score high on taste but might not necessarily look as pretty as the ones at the baker's display window. Think of any color in the sky or think of the most weird flavor on the planet and you can get a birthday cake which has just the right hues and flavor you want. Gone are the days when the birthday cake shapes were either circle or square and the flavors limited to chocolate and strawberry. The advancement in culinary techniques, advent of decoration tools, and availability of specialized molds has revolutionized the cake decorations like never before. Picking a Theme A themed birthday cake can make the birthday a truly special affair. Picking a theme is essential before you start decorating the cake. Imagine the look on your daughter's face when she looks at her cake, which is based on the theme of her favorite movie, or your music lover friend's expression on seeing a cake shaped like a musical note and topped with decorations that resemble instruments. Depending on the age, hobbies, and interests of the person, there can be endless number of themes for birthday cakes. You can have themes based on cartoons, movies, sports, colors, animals, music, computers, pirates, horror, etc. Shapes and Sizes If you thought a birthday cake could be either a square or a circle, then you obviously haven't gone around and checked for the various shapes that cakes can come in. Don't be surprised to walk into a birthday party, where you see a kid standing with a knife waiting to chop off the head of a green colored dinosaur. Yes birthday cakes now come in all shapes and sizes. Dinosaurs, houses, flowers, cartoon characters, buildings, or may be a globe. Innovative Decorations There is absolutely no limit when it comes to decorating a birthday cake. Edible miniature sculptures, icing sugar decorative flowers and trees, edible glitter, or even your very own photograph printed on the birthday cake - you name it they have it! Edible decorative elements are not only available as ready-made ensembles but there also exist DIY kits for cake decorations which are extremely easy to use and ensure that your cake decorations look exactly the same or even better than the professional ones kept for sale. Decorating a birthday cake is simpler than you ever imagined. A home-baked birthday cake is a much more heartfelt endeavor put into an action, where you can always experiment with food aesthetics when it comes to decorating your cake.