Those who order cakes with the icing / cream on it are made fools by modern cake shops. Please note modern bakeries have just started abusing on prices. They innovated recipes that no chef will agree.it is a pure ignorance of "bakery ethics". There are following commercial tactics used by bakeries like monginis, ribbons&balloons etc. Etc.all fancy bakeries and even the simple-ones the old-town side bakeries too.
1). Small-old-town bakeries used “margarine+butter+sugar” mixture as icing with dark colors.
2). Icing is overloaded on any cake in huge quantity. Its like they are selling you fluffy icing with weight increased by sugar.that is why cakes are looking smaller and smaller in size compared to their weight. They are sold as 1kg, 1/2 kg cakes which absolutely meaningless unit for selling it.
3). Between every layer of sponge sugar syrup(shakkar chasni) is put which is actually sugar+water - that makes the nice dry sponge soggy and heavy. The argument used is that icing is correctly set on such wet cake!believe me if you make a spongy dry cake after such a hassle of adding baking powder, whipped eggs, why would one spoil by spraying sugar syrup in its layers.?
4.) The icicing contains sugar too which adds to the weight, whiteness of the cream(it is never a real cream – see below)
5.) The so called "fresh cream icings" are of made of vegetable fats(margarine / vanaspati / hydrogenated oil), milk powder, water emulsion foam! There is no way a real “fresh cream” would stand so thick so long through saki naka kind of polluted & hot, sultry areas. They come in big caterer pouch and whipped for hours in machine to become like a toothpaste foam. See this link https://hydrosol.de/downloads-infomaterial/hydrosol-pflanzencremefolder-en.pdf
6.) All the pastries and b’day cackes have thin layer+ huge amount of icicing loaded on it so the cake is invisible. A nice decoration of colored fruits / sugar-loaded chocolate sauce makes it yummy
7). The cherries: there are 2 types of cherries used on cakes - one is the fruits "karvand" which is put in artificial red color and cooked like gulam jamun in sugar syrup - which is used in paan and other is pinkish red cherry which is in tin - it is real one and is mostly watery!& even fermented in hot indian climate.
If you want to make a real true birthday cake - buy a nice plum cake - get a chunk of good dark chocolate slab - in office melt in microwave, pour the melted chocolate on your cake in a large plate - put in it fridge for 10 min.decorate with real cherries / strawberries.or grated white chcolate slab.