Am I the only one?

The biggest cake design challenge I have is coming up with a masculine, general cake, for an adult man's birthday.

No theme given, just "a basic cake", a quick, small cake for a former wedding customer.

If given those parameters for a woman's cake, I just go with some pretty flowers, a ruffle trim, etc. Something basic and feminine.

And every time,  I get completely stumped when it comes to making a similar cake for a man.

I haven't been happy with a single one of these I've done in the past. They all look boring to me. Stripes. Dots. Blues. Blah. 

I can't overthink this, because honestly this is just a quick little cake, a smaller cake that is under my usual cake minimum, but I'm happy to do little cakes like this for former brides. Still, I'd like to be able to feel proud of even a little cake like this.

If anyone has any ideas they'd like to share, I'd love to see/hear about them.

If not, I just needed to vent my frustration anyway. :)

How about a "rustic" cake where the icing is not smooth with some type of decoration to go with it? I too have a hard time doing a man's cake. I have done an argyle pattern. If the man has a hobby could you work that in somehow?

AI have done argyle patterns around the cake, I've done camo designs, I've done the stars (with a bunch of wired stars on the top). Then there's doing a custom-colour job to match in with the guy's beloved car, or team colours, or beer etc. you need to ask a few questions of the person ordering.

But in a rush job situation, I always go the chocolate collar, with choc curls on top, plus choc-dipped strawberries!

Men are tricky...and usually no help in providing info!

AYeah, no hobbies or interests given. I personally don't like argyle and with a cake just in buttercreme, that further limits my options. And I looked back at their wedding cake order to see what the colors were, to at least get an idea of a color scheme, and the cake was all white. Lol!

I'm thinking that rusticy look might work. Maybe I'll throw a manly twig on it or something. ;)

for a 40th birthday i did white IMBC with black and silver overlapping circles on the bottom 3rd of the cake, and the number 40 on the top.

They have diamond plate impression mats -- diamond plate is the material they make those huge tool chests out of -- would make a simple but really cool "dude" cake.

how about this beautiful but simple design? You could vary the colors if you don't want to use blue.

AOh, I agree! I have made some seriously ugly dude cakes. I have a hideous one in my pics that is white with green and blue. It doesn't look professional at all, and is so boring. In my defense, no theme, no suggestions, no notice, and a whole book write on it.

I love the idea for a chocolate collar, but with all buttercream, maybe you could fake it? Chocolate buttercream with darker chocolate patterns or lines? Did you do it yet? If so, may we see?

Do a chocolate or pirouette cookie wrap.

I have found that guys love the shards o f chocolate that stick up from, or around a cake.

Just leave out the bows.  

AOoh, chocolate wraps/shards would have been good. Bah!

I ended up doing a petal (I call them blob smoosh) cake, like the blue ombré one above but in all white. I even looked back at the couple's wedding cake order to give me an idea for a favorite color, (birthday boy was a former groom from 2012) but their cake was all white. So I had: no hobbies. No color scheme. No interests. "Just a basic cake." So I did the blob smoosh with a blue gumpaste 26 on top. No photos of it. I was bored with it before it was even finished, and I don't take lasting photos of my boring cakes.

Another suggestion I got two weeks too late at our ICES DOS this past weekend was from a well known guy decorator: " if nothing else, you can do scrollwork. It looks nice but not particularly feminine." So I have some ideas now for the next time this comes up...