I decided to do a Chocolate Pirate Ship Birthday Cake after doing a bit of research as it lends itself to being the right colour for the ship.
The process was a lot easier than I thought. I baked a 9″ x 13″ Madeira cake (5 eggs, 240g each of self raising flour, butter and sugar and 120g of plain flour) and placed it in the freezer the day before I decorated it to ease sculpting without crumbling. Do not be put off by the quantities. I only used 2/3 of the cake to make the pirate ship and the remaining cake was used for distributing in the party bags.
The cake is actually 3 layers high. Cut a long rectangular bit for the base and two shorter bits for the ends. Use butter cream to stick the layers together and insert skewers to secure them.
Make a smooth chocolate flavoured butter icing to cover the whole ship, approximately 100g butter to 250g of butter icing plus some cocoa powder and milk. Leave overnight to harden slightly.
When the butter icing is not so wet, make regular plank patterns by using the end of a cold teaspoon. Line the deck with chocolate sticks.
Make the windows and anchor by melting chocolate and piping them on greaseproof paper. Freeze them to harden before peeling off. Attach to the ship with some cooled melted chocolate or chocolate butter cream icing. Use Maltesers or other chocolate balls for the canon balls and wafer rolls for the canons and crow’s nest. Use skewers to attach the sails and add some Lego pirate figures to complete the look.
The cake board was covered in sugarpaste and painted with turquoise food colour.
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