Pirate Ship Cake

Ahoy mateys!  My William turned 7 this weekend and this is the cake that I made for him.  I absolutely love making my kid’s birthday cakes.  It is one of those things that I look forward to doing every year.  This year, William wanted to be surprised and I am tired of cars, trucks, and airplanes.  So, a pirate ship it is!  This cake was surprisingly easy to make.  The things that make it really cool were the Playmobil pieces that I bought at Toys R Us.  Other than baking off some cake layers and making frosting, it was minimal effort on my part. I found this cake from my favorite website for kid parties, Family Fun.

Here is my birthday boy.  I am so proud to be his mother.  I love his sweet nature, creative spirit, and everything about him.  I cannot get over that he is 7 already.

I made my Beatty’s Chocolate Cake for the chocolate layers and a yellow cake from Smitten Kitchen.   I wanted to use chocolate and vanilla to make everyone happy, and I needed to make a fairly large cake.  I used 9-inch cake pans and used one and half of the yellow cake layers and one chocolate layer.  I made two batches of my chocolate buttercream frosting and had some left over.  Cut the layers in half and add frosting to the middle to stick them together.  I did this part vertically.  I stacked the cake layers on top of each other and used a serrated knife to cut about a half inch off of the round edge so that it would stand better and be more stable.  I generously iced the board and then flipped the cake onto the board.

As you can see, my layers shifted a bit when I flipped the cake onto the board, but I really liked it.  It made it look like the boat was rocking on the waves, so I kept it like that.  I inserted 3 wooden skewers through the cake for insurance though.  You do not have to ice carefully because we are going to texture it anyway.

I used a frosting comb with the ragged edge to go around all of the sides to make it look like wood.  That is it for actual cake making.  Now for the really fun part.

I put Pirouette cookies on the edges to look like railings of the boat.  I could not find Waffeletten cookies and did not have enough time to order them online, so I found these chocolate covered marshmallows to use instead.  I attached the marshmallows with toothpicks.  I put the candles in them as well.  I cut a few squares out of card stock and used a small hole punch to make the sails.  I put the Playmobil pieces around the ship and used Rolos and Whoppers for barrels and cannons.  I felt like it needed some color so I colored some canned white frosting and made it look like waves and stuck the boat in the water.

William and all of his friends absolutely loved this cake.  They really liked the candles coming out of the sides.  This cake is one of my most favorite cakes that I have ever made.

Happy Birthday William!