My 4 year old LOVES pirates and wanted a pirate birthday party. He also wanted a pirate cake, but not just any pirate cake. He was very specific in what had to be on this cake: a ship, water, islands, volcano, sharks, treasure chest, pirate map, and most important – a gummy crab.
I started by baking an 9×13 sheet cake and a 12×18 sheet cake as well as 4 cupcakes. I also baked one cake in a loaf pan which I used to carve out the ship. I frosted the large sheet cake with a cream cheese icing that I made from a recipe I found online. I tinted 1/2 of it blue for the water and made it “wavey”. I then took some of the white frosting and gently blended it in with the blue for the white caps on the waves.
I took the cupcakes and turned them upside down and frosted them with the white icing. The other smaller sheet cake I cut into sections and placed on top of the large cake and frosted with the white icing to become the beach and land. I placed the cupcakes around on the water for islands and a volcano. I then ground up vanilla wafers and sprinkled them on the beach, land and islands for sand. I used fruit roll-ups and pretzel sticks for the palm trees and Hershey’s Miniatures for the treasure chest. The hardest part was the gummy crab. I could not find a gummy candy crab and also wanted one somewhat to scale so I took a fruit roll-up and rolled it into a ball the right size and then took small strips of fruit roll-up and pressed then into the underside of the ball for legs.
I used candies to finish out the boat and for the sharks. I could not find a good place to write Happy Birthday so I printed the words in Pirate Script on some resume paper and cut them out for the sails and put them on the ship with wooden skewers. My son was so proud of his cake and everyone still talks about the amazing pirate cake with the gummy crab!!
great details!
great details!