DIY Camping Cake

If you are hosting a lumberjack, outdoor or camping themed party, this easy DIY camping cake is the perfect dessert. It made for a cute birthday cake that was easy to make at home with very few cake decorating skills.

Camping cake with pretzel trees, a campfire candle arrangement and tent.

This camping themed cake was fun to put together. It didn’t take a ton of time or special skills, but it turned out really cute.

Picking out a birthday party theme is something Little Dude and I look forward to each year. We usually start brainstorming several months in advance.

We have had a fun pirate party, a train themed party, a Dr. Seuss party and last year was a lego party. Each have been fun to plan and execute in different ways.

Looking down on camping cake with chocolate frosting, edible trees, a birthday candle bonfire and graham cracker tent.

As LD has gotten older, he is more and more involved in the planning process. This year he wanted a camping themed party.

We set up tents in the yard, grilled some hot dogs and hamburgers for dinner, and really enjoyed ourselves. We even had a Swedish fire log for s’mores at the end of the night.

We made a tasty trail mix to have on the tables. And made fun fishing poles from pretzel rods and gummy worms.

Small metal bucket with pretzel rods that look like fishing poles with gummy worms dangling from them.

But of course a birthday party requires a cake. LD requested an Oreo cake, so I made a homemade cookies and cream layer cake.

We coated the cake with chocolate Oreo buttercream. It worked perfectly because it not only tasted amazing but it worked well as a rustic dirt type finish for the cake.

We added some extra pieces of Oreo to the bottom rim of the cake to help make it look finished. Then it was time to focus on the real decoration.

Making trees out of pretzels and green chocolate

We used green candy melts and pretzel sticks to make the trees. We did some smaller trees with one pretzel and some taller trees that used a couple of pretzel sticks with extra chocolate to hold them together.

The only thing to keep in mind is the pretzels can get soft after they have been in the cake for a while. So you will want to wait until within a couple of hours of serving the cake to insert them.

If you want to put the trees on the cake sooner, use a bamboo skewer rather than a pretzel for the trunk. It will still look great, but won’t be affected by humidity.

Child's hand putting edible tree into camping cake.

A good campout requires a tent. We made ours from two graham cracker halves.

The leftover melted green chocolate was the perfect glue to hold them together. You could get creative and decorate it more if you want, but we kept ours simple.

The campfire was one of our favorite parts of the cake. We dipped more pretzel sticks in chocolate, but you could use them bare if you want.

Birthday candles lit to look like a bonfire.

We arranged them with some birthday candles to look like a bonfire. The candles were angled in so that when they were lit it made one big flame.

It really worked well and we got a lot of compliments on that feature. Most importantly the birthday boy was very happy with how the cake looked and tasted.

I hope this tutorial helps if you want to make your own camping cake! And if you want fun cupcakes to serve with this cake, check out our campfire cupcakes tutorial.

Or make a chocolate dirt cake to go with it. There is something about the combination of pudding and Oreos that is delightful and you can decorate it for the camping theme.