[Easy Recipe] How to Make a Korean-Style Saengil (Birthday) Cake
Do you know about Korea’s “saeng-il cake”? “Saeng-il” means birthday cake.
Its特徴 is that it’s made with buttercream instead of whipped cream, and unlike Japanese birthday cakes that are lavishly decorated with lots of fruit, it has a simple, cute look.
The pastel-colored creams—like pink and blue—are colorful and eye-catching.
In this article, we introduce handmade ideas for saeng-il cakes.
There are also options you can easily make with store-bought items or whipped cream, so try making one for a loved one’s birthday or a party!
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[Easy Recipe] How to Make a Korean-Style Saengil (Birthday) Cake (1–10)
Made with a cheese steamed cake
Let’s make a birthday “saeng-il” cake using cheese steamed cakes you can buy at supermarkets or convenience stores! Cut one diagonally, flip one half over, and stick them together—before you know it, you’ve got a heart shape.
Slice it horizontally, add cream and fruit in the middle, and decorate.
Finish by sprinkling on chocolate sprinkles you can pick up at a 100-yen shop, and it’s done! It’s simple and easy, yet you end up with an adorable heart-shaped cake—that’s a big plus, right?
Icing cookie decoration
Decorating with buttercream or whipped cream can be nerve-wracking because you don’t get a do-over, right? And I’m sure many people find that it doesn’t go as smoothly or as neatly as it looks in videos.
It does take a bit more effort, but how about piling on decorations with iced cookies instead? With icing cookies you still paint and draw, but it’s much easier to fix or redo things.
You can match the icing color to the cream, or go all out with bright, colorful icing—both will look super cute!
Simple flower design
This is a birthday cake decorated with flowers in a bright, cheerful yellow that instantly lifts your spirits.
The base is covered with a pale yellow cream, while the centers of the flowers and the lettering use a slightly deeper yellow, creating an eye-catching tone-on-tone effect.
Even if piping designs with cream feels difficult, this level seems doable, doesn’t it? Simple flowers like cosmos would make a lovely gift, too.
With a few tweaks, you could also represent seasonal flowers.
cloud birthday cake
Here’s a super cute birthday cake (saengil cake) idea with puffy clouds floating in a blue sky.
Saengil cakes often use soft pastel decorations like light blue, pink, and purple.
Among them, light blue cakes are quite common, and if you add clouds on top… isn’t that insanely cute? Before coloring the whipped cream, set some aside in a piping bag.
After spreading the colored cream over the sponge, pipe the uncolored cream on top so it looks fluffy and floating.
You just pipe round dollops and line them up, so it’s relatively easy to do.
Made with store-bought sponge cake
When making a cake, the sponge layer is the part most likely to go wrong.
Have you ever had it not rise as you expected, or turn out with a dry, crumbly texture? And it takes a long time to bake, too.
Here’s a game-changing idea: use a store-bought sponge cake for that time-consuming layer! If you use a ready-made sponge, all you need to do is slice and add the fruit, then focus all your attention on decorating.
The taste is guaranteed, so give it a try.