I'm sure it's happened to you. A beautiful birthday cake, perfect in every detail, and the lucky person with your masterpiece wants to put candles all over it so they can sing "Happy Birthday" and blow out the candles. Hours (or days!) of careful work being randomly stuck all over with multicolor dimestore wax candles just at the big moment as it is being presented to the crowd and guest of honor (not to mention the photograps). Do you have a creative solution for this that avoids the destruction of a beautifully-designed cake?

Unfortunately our art is made to be destroyed. My granddaughter is just appalled when we cut into a cake and it is gone in 10 minutes. I can hear her say "but Grandma, we worked all day on that".

I have not done it but I have seen CCers who make fondant balls and attach them to the cake board around the cake and then put the candles in each fondant ball. I hope I explained that correctly. HTH

That's what I did with this cake.......although most people think that they're red skittles or m&ms or something on the board...i took the candles out for the photo.....but that's what they're there for......mostly because there was nowhere to put candles in the gumball machine......but if it bothers you for them to stick them into the cake itself....make the board a little larger than normal and do it like that.

Another way to get the point across is to include the candles for free (i mean the most it's going to cost you is around .50 for a pack of candles)

Sometimes you can get really cute candles that actually accent the cake!

You can also make a number out of gumpaste and cut a candle so you have only the top piece or enough to stick into the number. An example would be like the one in my photos of the hugs and stitches stacked cake.

All great ideas, thanks!