Eight Cakes for March the 8th: International Women's Day

International Women's Day is a global holiday celebrating the cultural, political, and socioeconomic achievements of women. It was born from socialist feminist movements in the early twentieth century, who held ‘Women’s Day’ events every year to fight for equality. The day was eventually fixed as 8 March each year, in honour of the date Russian women won the right to vote in 1917. 

These days, International Women’s Day is recognised as a global holiday by the UN. It is a celebration of women’s achievements, and is also used as a focal point for women’s issues such as gender equality, reproductive rights, and violence against women.

Eight Cake Design Ideas for International Women’s Day

There is a serious side to International Women’s Day, but it is also a time to celebrate the women in your life and show them some appreciation. Naturally, every celebration deserves a cake, but as International Women’s Day is still a relatively new holiday, there aren’t really any traditional recipes yet. 

If you’re stuck for ideas, we’ve taken inspiration from some online cake stores in terms of decorations and overall theme. The decorations work with most types of sponge cake, so pick the recipient’s favourite flavour and go with that. The more you personalise the cake, the more special it will be, and remember that International Women’s Day is about celebrating the achievements of women and girls, so a cake showing your daughter’s graduation would be more appropriate than making her a cake shaped like a cute handbag, for example.

Our first cakes' designs are courtesy of Flower Aura, as follows:

Heart-shaped Cake 

A simple classic, the heart-shaped cake is the perfect way to say you care, and it’s great for so many different occasions. It’s super easy to make at home, too. Just make two diagonal cuts at the bottom of the cake to create the point, and stick the semicircular offcuts onto the top with buttercream for an instant heart shape. 

Personalised Cake 

Cakes with photographs are a great way to personalise your International Women’s Day cake, and most cake stores can take a photograph of your choice and print it on to your cake using edible ink. Celebrate the women in your life with photographs of cherished memories, moments of great achievement in their lives, or pictures of them enjoying their favourite hobby.

Designer Cake

Designer cakes are intricately decorated, often multi-layered celebration cakes made by professional cake designers or very talented home bakers, often using moulded fondant icing. Here you can really get creative in how you personalise your cake, with piped messages or cute cake toppers featuring your daughters dressed as superheroes or your wife nailing it at her job.

Vegan Cake

If the woman in your life is vegan, celebrate her love for the environment with a delicious vegan cake. Vegan versions of most popular cakes are available to buy, and there are plenty of simple recipes to follow if you’re thinking of baking your own.

Cupcakes

Who doesn’t love cupcakes? If there are several important women in your life, share the love with a box of cupcakes. You can treat each cupcake like a tiny designer cake, with personalised messages and toppers.

If you still haven’t found what you’re looking for, here are some more design ideas from Kingdom of Cakes:

Wonder Woman Cake:

Celebrate the strong women in your life with this striking superhero cake, decorated with the Wonder Woman badge in red, blue and gold fondant icing. Perfect for heroines everywhere, and a fun, inspiring role model for little girls.

Women’s Day Carnation Buttercream Cake

Buttercream flowers look beautiful on any cake. They’re surprisingly easy to make at home, using buttercream with extra sugar to make a thick paste, but if you’re not confident with intricate decoration, you can always have a professional do it for you. Flowers make anything look pretty, and many have symbolic meanings in various cultures. Red carnations symbolise love and affection, while pink means gratitude. You can also experiment with other flower decorations for different meanings. For example, dahlias stand for elegance and dignity, gladiolus for strength of character, purple iris for wisdom, and orange tulip for gratitude and love.

Gumball Queen Women’s Day Cake

A fun and striking design, this cake is decorated with fondant icing and gumballs, with a golden crown on the top. The perfect way to celebrate all the women you know who are queens of their own destiny.

We hope these delicious cakes have given you some ideas for fun ways to remember International Women’s Day and to celebrate the achievements of women around the world. Don’t worry if you don’t get it perfect - the important thing is to show your support. The best gift any woman can receive for International Women’s Day is to live in mutual respect with the men in her life all year round.

Finally, if you feel like putting the ‘International’ back into International Women’s Day, why not try celebrating the day like the Italians do? In Italy, International Women’s Day is known as ‘la Festa della Donna’, and women are traditionally given bunches of bright yellow mimosa flowers as a sign of love, appreciation and solidarity. To celebrate, people eat traditional mimosa cakes, made from layers of sponge and creamy custard, topped with crumbled yellow sponge to mimic the yellow flowers of the mimosa.