Atradition that many of us look forward to on our birthdays is the birthday cake. Whether we spend hours in the kitchen baking up a storm, we have a special cake made to celebrate the big day or we revert back to the classic Colin the Caterpillar cake, there is nothing more special than blowing out the candles on your special day and diving into a slice of delicious cake. The tradition of buying, baking, or bringing a cake to a special occasion is one the royal family also abide by.

Princess Kate celebrates her 42nd birthday today, reminding us of all the occasions she has celebrated with a special cake, starting with her own birthday cake. Though not much is known about Kate’s personal favourite cake on her birthday, we know that the homemade route is her preferred and it has been said that the princess loves to make it about her children, even on her birthday.

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Vanity Fair reported that the Princess celebrates her birthday in private at Kensington Palace and that “Kate’s not into big birthday celebrations, but [Prince] George and [Princess] Charlotte adore birthday cake, so there will be a special tea party at the Palace with candles and presents.” Meanwhile, Woman & Home reported that her low-key celebrations will likely include a sweet feast of jelly and ice cream with the children.

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When it comes to her children’s birthday cakes, Princess Kate gets her apron on. During the 2019 edition of Mary Berry’s A Berry Royal Christmas, Kate revealed she “stays up until midnight” to make her children’s birthday cakes – something that has now become quite the tradition in their household. A homemade cake is never too rustic for a royal. In fact, the sweet tradition was repaid on Mother’s Day when William and Kate shared a photo on their Instagram of a delicious Victoria’s sponge cake made by George, Charlotte and Louis for their mother.

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The jam and buttercream-filled cake was decorated with piped icing and sprinkles, prompting one royal follower to comment: “George, Charlotte, Louis, you’d get a handshake from Mary Berry! Happy Mother’s Day!”. William and Kate also ensure there are gorgeous cakes to mark occasions besides members of the family’s birthdays. The royal pair had a delicious fruitcake made to mark Prince George’s baptism at the Chapel Royal at St James’s Palace in October 2013.

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The most special part of Prince George’s cake was its traditional origin. As per British custom, William and Kate froze the top layer of their wedding cake, which is customarily a fruitcake, and served it to guests at Prince George’s baptism. The Prince and Princess of Wales’ wedding cake was quite the affair. The couple celebrated their big day with a bespoke eight-tiered cake created by cake designer Fiona Cairns.

Speaking exclusively to HELLO!, Fiona said that the cake, which took six weeks to make, was always going to be fruitcake. “We knew it was going to be a fruitcake because that’s what we’d been briefed to do and we’re sort of known for fruit cake. Then it had to be designed and we had to visit the picture gallery in Buckingham Palace to get the proportions right and where it was going to be [placed],” the cake designer said.

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Fiona revealed: “It amazes people that we hadn’t actually seen the finished cake assembled until the day before. So you can imagine how stressful the whole was because we’d worked it all out to great detail.

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“We had assembled mock-ups or parts of it and we knew it was going to work, but we hadn’t actually physically done it on that beautiful bespoke glass stand that we had made for it in the middle of the picture gallery in Buckingham Palace. We didn’t see the whole thing ourselves until we finished it lunchtime the day before the wedding.” The white cake featured stunning flowers made from sugar paste, with the lace of Kate’s Sarah Burton gown inspiring the design. Fiona told us: “Yes, that was part of the brief but we weren’t told it was part of her dress. It was amazing when I saw her [Kate] in the Abbey. I thought, ‘Oh I recognise that lace, I’ve seen that before!’ We were trying to copy it.”

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Kate has also been photographed with many a cake during public engagements. The then-Duchess of Cambridge was seen cutting a cake on a visit to the Robin Hood Primary School to celebrate ten years of The Royal Horticultural Society campaign for school gardening in 2017. In the same year, the mother-of-three was pictured marvelling at a cake with a cycling design during a one-day visit to Luxembourg at Place de Clairfontaine for a cycling festival.