Tolkien Themed Birthday Cake Ideas
Lord of the Rings Inspired Cake Decorating
Ideas for thrilling the birthday geek with a Middle-Earth novelty cake.
Bag End
Bilbo's and Frodo's hobbit hole is easy to make out of a rectangular sheet cake. Cut the cake to resemble a hill; use green icing and green-tinted coconut for the grass on top, and coffee- or chocolate-flavoured icing for the walls. Biscuits, piping or flat ice-cream wafers cut to shape can be used for two round hobbit windows and a larger, round, preferably gren door. Use a sweet or gold cachous ball for the central doorknob. Be as creative as you like decorating the outside of Bag End with flowerpots, Sam Gamgee's gardening tools or Gandalf's staff resting by the door!
The Ring
A very easy cake to ice, simply bake a cake in a ring tin, ice with yellow icing and decorate by piping the Elvish letters around the edge. An example of the Elvish script can be found in most copies of LOTR. Use a pin to scratch the design into the wet icing before piping—that way, you can re-smooth the icing and start again if you have trouble with the spacing or font.
An Elvish Leaf Brooch
Peter Jackson's movie featured delicate Elvish leaf brooches, given to the Fellowship by Galadriel. Cut the leaf shape from a sheet cake and use green icing. For the silver edging, edible silver dust can be bought from most cake decorating shops. Alternatively, use silver cachous balls to mark out the edging and veins, or simply use white icing.
The White Tree
For chocolate lovers: a deep, dark chocolate mudcake, iced smoothly with dark chocolate ganache, and with Gondor's White Tree design piped on top in white chocolate.
Pennants, Flags, Shields and Hangings
A quick Google image search will reveal plenty of stark and simple imagery from Peter Jackson's LOTR films, in the form of pennants, banners, wall hangings, shields and flags. Be creative—your cake could be a direct copy from a wall hanging, or a free-and-easy interpretation containing various design elements.
A Copy of LOTR
For a quirky twist on a LOTR-themed cake, try decorating the cake as the book itself! Use piping and flooding techniques for the title and any cover pictures. Alternatively, you could ice the cake as an open copy, with the birthday person's favourite LOTR quote piped on the open pages. A rectangular sheet cake could be carved to resemble the shape of an open book, or you could hire an open book cake tin—they are available from cake decorating shops in the christening-cakes section. Cake decorating shops also sell black food colouring, for a professional-looking font.
Mount Doom
A cake baked in a pudding basin can be turned upside-down to become Mount Doom. Use caramel, raspberry or passionfruit sauce to spill lava down the sides. Hobbit figures could be made from marzipan, but for a quick and easy cake, use the smallest Frodo and Sam figurines you can find.
A Map of Middle-Earth
A simple sheet cake in any shape—rectangular, square or round—can easily be transformed into a map of Frodo's journey. Ice the cake with coffee-coloured icing. Then, with a copy of LOTR open to the maps at the back, pipe the details with dark chocolate icing or melted chocolate. Be sure to include place names like The Shire and Rivendell.
