Coolest Pirate Ship And Island Birthday Cake

I gathered ideas for a Pirate Ship And Island Birthday Cake from this website to create the vision for my triplets 4th birthday. I baked 3 pound cakes (2 round, 1 loaf) because they are so dense it makes the form more stable/substantial.

After those had completely cooled I quartered the round cakes and layered three of the quarters together with icing to create the front of the ship and then repeated this for the rear of the ship. I then used icing and dowels to secure the front and back to the loaf form.

I refrigerated this for a few hours so it would become more solid for the carving process. The carving was free hand based on my vision, but I believe creating a template out of wax paper would make the process easier/more accurate. I then angled the carved boat on top of a 1.5 sheet cake for the ocean. One of the remaining quarters of pound cake was placed on the sheet cake in the corner opposite the ship to create the island.

I did a crumb coat all over and let that sit in the fridge for an hour and then iced the whole thing. I finished it off with ground up graham crackers for the island sand and surrounding cake. I used skewers for the mast and printed on parchment for the sales. The “lookout basket” was a cut off ice cream cone painted with cake coloring gel. Rolos were used for the cannons and treasure. Whoppers for cannon balls and the cookie sticks created the ship railings.

It was fun to create, but most of all my daughter said it was her favorite part of the party!