Number 4 Naked Cake

It's pretty old-school to have a cake shaped in the number of years that you are turning. But traditional number cakes were always covered in cream and classically decorated with a few royal icing roses, with the words written script-style in piping gel. But nowadays, when you say number cake, there are all sorts of designs, Super-hero themed and covered in fondant, rainbow buttercream roses number cakes, cartoon number cakes, and even number cakes that are standing up! 

Number 4 Cake

But the new "number cake" trend started by Adi Klinghofer all over Instagram is simply a naked cake or cookie or tart, in the shape of a letter or number, with blobs of cream and decorated with fresh flowers, fresh fruit, macarons, candies and biscuits! It can be topped and with anything that you see fit, really. More importantly, it is fuss-free and super quick to whip up, especially if you have all the topping ready to go.

Tsum Tsum Number Cake

I got to try making this type of cake for my daughter's birthday earlier this year, as a Tsum-Tsumified no. 6 cake! I had another opportunity to make another Tsum-Tsum number cake, this time to celebrate a young lady's 4th birthday. Her mummy said she loves Tsum Tsum and pink, so here's what I came up with.

Lots of yummy toppings

Tsum Tsum Number Cake

The cake is a sheet pan-sized vanilla sponge cake, baked with oil and yogurt to keep it more moist, since the sides would be naked and exposed. Nothing is worse than dry cake! The cake is filled with chocolate custard inside, to give it more flavour, and then bordered and topped with vanilla chantilly cream, piped on with a large round piping nozzle.

chocolate custard filling

naked cake side view

To decorate, I put on some pink fresh flowers (with the stems wrapped in cling film so it doesn't directly touch the cake), cotton candy meringue kisses, Callebaut dark chocolate Crispearls & fresh strawberries and blueberries, making sure to glaze the berries so they stay fresh and have a nice shine. To Tsumify the cake, I added too cute Tsum Tsum macarons from Milleaville Macarons. 

Tsum Tsum Macarons!

shiny glaze on the berries

I also made a fondant Happy Birthday message plaque to go right in the middle of the cake. I coated the back of the fondant in white chocolate, so that it wouldn't start dissolving from all the moisture in the cream that it is sitting on. Really love how this cake turned out! 

view from another angle

Happy 4th Birthday, Rorie!

There's always leftover cake when making a number cake. All the off-cuts from carving the shape! So my family and I got to enjoy some cake for dessert after dinner too. #perksofthejob :)

cake made from leftover cake! lol.