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Love From The Oven

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Unicorn Cake

I had SO much fun trying to recreate a Katherine Sabbath inspired unicorn cake for my daughter’s birthday last week.

Katherine Sabbath Style Cake

If you don’t know who Katherine is, go check out her Instagram. It’s kind of like Willy Wonka and Candy Land ran into a cool and ridiculously talented baker. After cake stalking her Instagram for months, I came up with my Katherine Sabbath inspired unicorn cake…

UNICORN CAKE

Unicorn Cake

Fun, colorful and crazy! It’s by no means perfect, or near the work Katherine does, but it was so much fun to put this together, with so many elements, so much color and all the sprinkles.

How To Make A Unicorn Cake

Crazy chocolate bark inspired by Katherine Sabbath
I am not a big cake maker. Or should I say that I’m not a big cake stacker and decorator. I can make a cake taste pretty dang delicious, but decorating cakes is not my thing. At all (notice a lack of them on this blog???). I’ve even talked about my cake anxiety. Layers and structure and all that, it all scares me! I stick to cupcakes, cookies, bars and the like. Give me a nice 9×13″ pan to bake in and I’m safe. Layer cakes? Not so much! But sometimes you have to get out of your comfort zone. I am a fairly impulsive baker, so planning a cake and working on it over days is not my norm.

Chocolate Bark Topped Cake

By working on this over a few days, I changed gears quite a few times. I originally wanted to make one of Katherine’s Melting Ice Cream Cone Cakes, then thought I’d do bark topped cupcakes, then decided that trying to make meringues like Charlie Buckett would be fun. I was all over the place, but fortunately, that kind of works with this style. I have never made meringues before,  but by some stroke of luck, mine worked out pretty well. They are SUCH a fun element on the cake.

Meringue topped cake

This was so fun. This style is so creative and inspiring, no rules, just color, and whimsy and FUN. Oh Katherine, you are a creative genius.

So, let me break down how I made this cake. I didn’t get quite as many pics as I would have liked, but here we go. All the supplies I used are linked up at the bottom of the post.

UNICORN CAKE

THE CAKE

I started by making a three layer dark chocolate cake. I used this recipe from Created By Diane. I replaced one cup of the water with one cup of coffee to kick up the dark chocolate flavor. Once the cake was cooled and leveled, I crumb coated it with a basic buttercream frosting and stuck it in the fridge.

THE UNICORN BARK

Next I made my chocolate unicorn bark for the top. You can check out my post on how to make unicorn bark. This bark would be darling on it’s own or on top of cupcakes!

Swirled Chocoalte Bark

Candy Bark Cake
THE MERINGUES

For the whimsical meringue kisses, I followed a great meringue tutorial on Bakerella’s site. I’ve never made meringues before, so I was really worried if they would turn out.

Charlie Buckett style meringues

They actually did turn out! However I learned you do NOT open the oven for any real period of time when you are baking them. I made two pans worth, and one pan went in before the other. The first pan came out great, but the second pan was full of cracked meringues.

How To Make a Katherine Sabbath Type Cake

Many cracked in a way that I could break the “top” off and still use it on the cake, and some on the cake show the cracks, but really there is so much going on with this cake that you don’t notice if you aren’t looking for it. I adore their curly little tops! So much fun!

Katherine Sabbath Style Cake

THE FROSTING

Next up I made another batch of basic buttercream frosting and frosted the entire cake, and pressed a crazy mix of rainbow sprinkles into the base of the cake. I pretty much just mixed up all of the bright, spring colored sprinkles I had. For the cake color, I used the blue from McCormick’s Neon Food Color pack. It always gives a nice Tiffany type blue color.

I chilled the cake for a while, then removed it from the fridge to finish it off. I chopped my bark into pieces and gently placed them into the cake. Then it was time to flood the cake with a pop of hot pink.

Katherine Sabbath Inspired Birthday Cake by LoveFromTheOven-8

THE HOT PINK GANACHE (or not ganache)

The ganache. The gorgeous, hot pink, raspberry ganache that Katherine Sabbath uses is absolutely stunning and it had me completely stressed for days. I would lay in bed thinking about it at night (sad but true). White chocolate can be a bit more challenge when making ganache, and then you add in the food color, all that has to go onto the cake, not wanting to possibly melt the buttercream with warm ganache… So I chickened out. I need this cake to turn out, as it was for my daughter’s birthday, so I decided to play it safe and made a hot pink glaze, similar to what you’d put on sugar cookies (powdered sugar, a touch of milk and a touch of corn syrup for the shine).

Hot Pink Glaze On Katherine Sabbath Inspired Cake

There is no question that ganache would have tasted much better, as glaze is super sweet, but at ages 11 and 12, sweet typically isn’t seen as a negative, so glaze it was. I did talk to one other baker who made a glaze with frozen raspberries and powdered sugar for her cake, which could be absolutely fabulous, but the birthday girl doesn’t like raspberries. I wanted something that would help hold the toppings in place, but would not be rock hard. The glaze worked wonderfully for this, even if it wasn’t my top choice from a flavor perspective.

I put my chocolate bark on BEFORE the glaze, and I used a piping bag to help get the glaze in between the different pieces of bark. Once the top was covered with glaze, I quickly placed meringues on top, a fun Happy Birthday banner and more sprinkles, pearls, edible gold stars and a light sprinkling of rainbow disco dust (how can you not add some glitter???) to the top. And voila, after three (or four) days, it was done.

Katherine Sabbath Type Cake

Then I had to transport it. ๐Ÿ™‚  Luckily it made it to my daughter’s party all in one piece. YAY!!! Talk about a huge sigh of relief. Part of why I opted out of making the melting ice cream cone cake was fear of it not reaching it’s final destination in one piece.

Birthday Cake Ideas For TeensSUPPLIES

For my unicorn cake I found the disposable hot pink cake board at my local baking supply, ABC Cake Decorating. I think this is the exact same one. The pastel Easter sprinkles I used were similar to these. I also used pastel confetti quins, white jimmies, white mini pearls, edible gold stars, Sweetworks Shimmer Pearls, Sweetworks Shimmer Sixlets, mini silver dragees, pink heart quins, white nonpareils, and rainbow disco dust. This is the cake flag I used. There is a LOT going on with this cake! ๐Ÿ™‚

Sprinkles And Candies

Katherine Sabbath Inspired Unicorn Cake

Katherine Sabbath inspired cake

Cake Like Katherine Sabbath

Unicorn Chex Mix is great paired with this fun cake. 

A bowl of colorful chex mix

I think some Unicorn Ice Cream is pretty darn perfect to go with this cake. Check out this recipe from Bread, Booze, Bacon.

Unicorn Ice Cream

Maybe wash it down with some Unicorn Hot Chocolate from Love And Olive Oil.

Unicorn Hot Chocolate

Or a Unicorn Milkshake from Bethcakes.

Unicorn Milkshake

Okay, maybe don’t have ALLLL the unicorn things at once. ๐Ÿ˜‰

My daughter loved her unicorn cake, and I had a great time making it. Thanks to the amazing Katherine Sabbath for providing so much inspiration for myself and so many other bakers. I hope that girl has a book in the works, because I can’t get enough of her amazing work!

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links.

A whimsical, colorful, birthday cake inspired by Katherine Sabbath.

About author Christi Johnstone of Love From The Oven

Christi is the baker, cook, blogger, food photographer, recipe developer and sprinkle lover behind Love From The Oven. As a busy mom, it's important to Christi that her recipes are family-friendly and picky eater approved. In addition to running Love From The Oven, Christi is the author of The My Little Pony Baking Book and Smart Cookie, and the co-author of Peeps-A-Licious.
Interested in working with Christi? please contact her by email.
This post may contain affiliate links, please see our disclosure policy.

Home ยป Holiday ยป Birthdays ยป Unicorn Cake

#LoveFromTheOven Baking & Sweets Birthdays Cakes & Cupcakes Holiday
March 2, 2015 by LOVE FROM THE OVEN

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  1. Melissa says

    March 4, 2015 at 11:49 am

    Holy cow, you have outdone yourself on this one! I can’t believe all the time this must have taken! It looks amazing. Totally professional. My girls would die if they got a cake like this.

    Reply
  2. Johanne says

    March 17, 2015 at 8:08 am

    OMG !!! OO
    I’m crazy about this cake and would like to do something similar for my DD’s birthday this w-end !
    I was wondering if you could share your glaze recipe ( I mean the quantities used of each ingredients in order to achieve it …)
    Thanks ! … and you rock ! I’m a fan ๐Ÿ˜‰
    Johanne from Montreal, Canada

    Reply
    • Christi says

      March 17, 2015 at 9:12 am

      Johanne, good luck, it’s such a fun cake! Honestly I didn’t measure anything with the glaze. Probably started with a few cups powdered sugar and then added in milk/corn syrup and mixed until it started to get to the consistency I wanted. More liquid for thinner, more powdered sugar for thicker. Sorry I don’t have exact amounts, when it comes to frosting and glazes I kind of just throw them together. I can’t wait to hear how yours turns out and happy birthday to your daughter! ๐Ÿ™‚

      Reply
      • Johanne says

        March 17, 2015 at 11:43 am

        Thanks for the answer Christie ! ๐Ÿ˜‰
        I will try as you say as far as measurement goes and will trust my feeling on this . If everything goes well and ”as planned” I will surely posted a pic and will link you to it ! Thank you sooooooo much for the inspiration.
        Cross my fingers everything turn great hehehe

        Reply
  3. Erin @ Miss Scrambled Egg says

    March 20, 2015 at 9:46 am

    This is such a good tutorial and idea. I love all of the colors. The cake would be perfect for any celebration. ๐Ÿ˜€

    Reply
  4. Jill @ KitchenFunWithMy3Sons says

    April 15, 2015 at 5:39 am

    You did a fantastic job on this cake…so fun. I adore Katherine…she is amazing!

    Reply
    • Christi says

      April 16, 2015 at 6:50 am

      Thanks Jill, it was so much fun to make!

      Reply
  5. Jessica Alvarez says

    July 13, 2015 at 8:43 pm

    Hi! I was looking to make my own version of one of these Katherine Sabbath inspired cakes and I was wondering what size cake pan you used and how many layers it took to get that height? 6 inch? 8 inch? Not sure what to do for it to be taller not wider so that the drip looks good coming down! Thanks so much ๐Ÿ™‚

    Reply
    • Christi says

      July 16, 2015 at 8:44 am

      Jessica, I went with a six inch pan. I agree that the taller beats the wider for this style of cake!

      Reply
  6. Erin says

    September 2, 2015 at 1:51 pm

    What colors did you mix for the hot pink? Also, can you post your recipe for the glaze? I’m tackling a Katherine-inspired cake next month for my 10 year old and, like you, the stress of the impending ganache task is keeping me up at night! Thank you!

    Reply
  7. Erin says

    September 2, 2015 at 1:53 pm

    Never mind – I just saw your previous comment!

    Reply
  8. Aymie says

    December 4, 2016 at 9:44 pm

    Can you please tell me what good coloring you used on your glaze? The color is perfect!!! Love this! Thank you!

    Reply
  9. Diane says

    September 18, 2020 at 11:05 am

    OMG that is some fantastic cake you have there, what great work you did. I’m sure everyone just loved it.

    Reply
Hi, I'm Christi I love sharing easy & delicious recipes that your family & friends will love. I'm a mom, cookbook author...Read More

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