Would your kids like some sushi fat their next birthday party? What if that sushi were made from little circles of cake and decorated with candy? It’s easy to make your own realistic-looking sushi cakes that are bite-sized for little hands and little mouths. You don’t even need any special baking tools or equipment.
Sushi Cake Ideas for Kids’ Birthday Parties
What you Need
Cake – The first thing you need is a cake mix. You can use any flavor of boxed cake mix for the miniature sushi cake rolls.
Empty Film Roll – You will also need one sanitized and washed empty 35mm film roll container. This is what you will use to make the miniature sushi cake rolls. It can be sprayed with non-stick spray to keep the cake from sticking.
If you do not have one you can always make an appropriately-sized circle cake cutter. Take a piece of card stock and cut it into a strip. Tape it so it is in a circle with a one and a half inch diameter.
Cover the card stock with some aluminum foil. This will be used to cut the cake out, in perfect little rolls. Make more than one “cutter” if the kids want to help you with this part.
The other option is to use a miniature circle cookie cutter, if you have one on hand.
How to Make the Sushi Cake Rolls for Kids’ Birthday Parties
Bake the cake in a 13x9x2 baking pan. Or use two round cake pans, if that is what you have in the kitchen. Follow the directions on the box for the cake.
Let the cake cool completely before you attempt to cut the sushi cake rolls.
Use the homemade circle cutter or the film roll to cut out as many sushi cake rolls from the cake as you can. Keep the circles close together, but still maintain the round edges.
Conserving Tip: There will be some portions of the cake which will be left -over. The crumbly pieces will be too small to make more sushi rolls, but you may not want to throw it in the garbage. Crumble up the remaining cake. It can be used as a mix in for ice cream for the birthday party. Or, freeze it and use it a pudding or ice cream mix in for a dessert on another occasion.
Sushi Cake Roll Components
It is the toppings that make these sushi cake rolls look real. Once you have the sushi rolls cut out, you can start the building process. These are the main food items you need to make the birthday party sushi cake rolls.
Shredded White Coconut – The one topping you need for the sushi cake rolls is coconut. This topping will be the rice. If the kids do not like coconut, you can skip this part, but the sushi cake rolls will not look as realistic.
Rice (Optional) – Because it is not completely outrageous to use real rice in a dessert like rice pudding, you could include some real rice in the sushi cake roll toppings if you like the idea but do not like coconut.
Frosting – You also need to purchase some white frosting, unless you have a favorite frosting recipe that you can make at home. The white frosting can be vanilla flavored, cream cheese flavored, or butter cream.The frosting is going to be what holds the sushi roll components together.
Dark-colored Fruit Roll-Ups – Simulate the look of seaweed with some dark green or purple fruit roll up strips. Not all of the sushi cake rolls need the fruit roll-ups, since not all real sushi has seaweed.
Assembling the Sushi Cake Rolls for Kids’ Birthday Parties
Seaweed Sushi
Use a butter knife or plastic knife (for kids) to dot some frosting on the outer edge of the sushi roll. Roll a strip of the fruit roll-up around the outside of the cake, to make the seaweed.
Use a more generous amount of frosting to cover the top of the cake. Sprinkle on some coconut, to emulate rice. Do this for half of the cakes. Move onto the section on decorating.
Rice Sushi
For the other half of the cakes, use coat the sides and the top with frosting and roll the cake in coconut. This will look like real sushi without the seaweed wrapper.
Decorating the Sushi Cake Rolls for Kids’ Birthday Parties
Here are some more ideas for sushi cake roll toppings. Use what you have on hand, or purchase a variety of toppings to make a tray of realistic looking sushi cake rolls. Typically a plate of sushi includes variety.
Sugar-Free Decorations
Because there is already sugar in the cake and in the frosting, you may want to make some of these birthday party treats without extra sugar or candies. Here are some standard baking foods that you can use to decorate the birthday party treats, without adding extra sugar.
Black Sesame Seeds really are used in sushi that can be used sparingly on sushi cake rolls.
Poppy Seeds can be used to look like baby fish eggs, or roe. Using poppy seeds is one way to add color without adding any extra sugar to the birthday party treats.
Dried Fruit Toppings
You can also decorate the top of these kids’ birthday party treats with cut up dried fruits.
Dried papaya has a bright orange color which mimics raw tuna.
Dried Pineapple can also be diced into tiny pieces and used as a decorative element on these kids’ birthday party treats.
Candy Toppings
One candy topping which kids will adore are Swedish fish. Add a Swedish fish to the top of a rice sushi cake roll. Wrap a thin strip of a fruit roll-up around the center of the fish to secure it to the birthday treat.
Colored Sugar which you may have left over from Valentine’s Day or from Christmas can also be sprinkled on the top of the kids’ birthday party treats to look like tiny fish eggs.
Serve these kids’ birthday party treats on a large serving platter. Decorate the table with chop sticks. You can also make the serving platter look like a sushi boat, by adding a sail.
