Easy Camo Birthday Cake { No decorating skills required! }

Easy Camo Birthday Cake that takes NO special tools or skills.

We always had homemade birthday cakes growing up….never store-bought…and I instinctively do the same for my kids now.

Homemade birthday cakes are, of course, much more budget-friendly….plus it’s more special when mom is taking time to make the birthday boy a cake that will make him smile!

However…it’s already taking a lot of time to get a birthday party together, isn’t it? I tend to rush around getting all the things done when one of my kids’ birthdays rolls around, and making a cake can end up being added pressure. I get it. So this cake-making business needs to be simple and semi-quick so we don’t get stressed out. 🤪

:: PIN FOR LATER ::

I’m here to help boy-moms out with this Easy Camo Birthday Cake. You literally just plop the frosting on the cake in little piles and then smooth it out later. SO. EASY.

If I can do it, YOU can do it. I’ve never been a cake decorator. I can do it…I do it every birthday…but I’d never take a paid job doing a cake for someone. I do just enough to get by. 

So let’s get down to business so you can see how insanely simple this Camo Birthday Cake really is.

HOW TO MAKE AN EASY CAMO BIRTHDAY CAKE

First things first! Bake your cake and mix up your frosting!

I just baked a Duncan Hines chocolate cake from a mix. I also saved myself the pain of leveling the cake out and frosting the sides by leaving it right in the pan. ✅

For the frosting, I mixed up this Buttercream Frosting that Lisa has on Simple Joy, but really, any buttercream will do. You don’t want to use canned frosting for this because you need this frosting to “crust” before you smooth it out, and canned frosting doesn’t do that.

I also mixed up 1/4 batch of my Dark Chocolate Frosting to use for the brown – way better than trying to color white frosting THAT dark brown, and the rich, fudgy, chocolate taste is absolutely heavenly. Any excuse to mix some of this up, I’m all in.

CAMO CAKE COLORS

You can get creative with the other colors. As we know, all “camo” patterns aren’t specific shades of greens and tans. I chose a tan, light green, dark green combo.

Here are the Wilton icing colors that I used on my cake >>>

For the tan, I used just a tiny bit of brown with this light tan as my goal color. ⬇️

For the light green I used a small amount of Leaf Green with this as my goal color. ⬇️

The dark green took a lot more food coloring. I used about twice the amount of green that I did for the light green, PLUS, I used an equal amount of black with that green.

If you find yourself unsure about the color, it’s always good to walk away for a minute, then come back with fresh eyes – you may think your color is wayyy off, but when you come back after resting your eyes from it for a minute, you realize it looks great. 

(Ask me how I know this, hahaha….. 😂)

Time to turn this cake into a Camo Birthday Cake!

So after your cake is baked and cooled, and your frosting is made and colored, it’s time to get your frosting ready to pipe onto the cake.

Sometimes I use the special Wilton cake decorating bags, but when I’m in a rush and just want to throw the bags away when I’m done, I just use Ziploc bags. I used quart bags for each of these colors. 

Just fill the bags and seal them, then clip one bottom corner of each bag.

Here’s how to decorate this cake to make it a Camo Cake

Creating a camo design is done totally at random, but if you’re not comfortable with that, just follow the basic design that I have here – I took pictures along the way so you can copy the idea.

I like to do all of one color before moving to another color, but you might prefer to work left to right with all the colors at once! Do whatever seems easier to you. 👌🏻

Look how easy that is – you’re literally “blobbing” it on there. (I’ll show you how to smooth this out to finish it.)

Ok, so once all the colorful blobbing is done 🤣, you’ll let this sit for a couple hours until the frosting “crusts” – check it now and then to see if you can touch it or if it’s still sticky.

Once it’s not sticky anymore, grab a piece of wax paper and put it over the cake. 

Then you just rub the covered cake gently (your hand will warm the frosting slowly as you go, so if it’s not budging at first, just give it a minute to warm)….and let those colorful blobs smooth down into the camo pattern.

It’s so easy!

(If you do this and your frosting is sticking to the wax paper, you didn’t let the frosting crust enough. Just remove that piece of wax paper and throw it away…..leave the cake for a bit longer, then try again.)

When you peel the wax paper off, you will have a nice camouflage design!

I used my leftover frosting (still just in the Ziploc bags) and put a little border on my cake just for fun. 😁

Wasn’t that easy??

And my boys thought I was the most amazing mom EVER after I made this. 😆 Woohoooo 👏🏻

You’ll look like a PRO after you make this cake, and we want to see it!! Be sure to tag us on social media! We’re @sixcleversisters. 😃