Ahoy Matey!

I think you may have noticed, but I am just not very creative on my own... so I stole this idea from Family Fun: it is my go to for fun cakes. I modified a little, and was very happy with it. For dinner group there were two birthdays this week, so I made a cake! Our dinner group's theme is "Pirates of the Dinner Group," so what would be better than a PIRATE SHIP cake! That's right folks-- a pirate ship :)

I'd like to just put pictures up and let you marvel at them, but that would reduce the fun of this experience... so here's what you'll need:

• 1 cake, baked in 2- 9" rounds
• Chocolate frosting (family fun says 3-4 cups, but I made my own so I don't really know how much there was)
• Chocolate wafer rolls (Pirouettes) (cannons) 
• tootsie rolls (cannon base/barrels)
• whoppers (cannon balls)
• pirate action figure/lego/playmobile (I couldn't find one at the dollar store, so I actually used a wrestler who didn't have a hand, I drew on an eye patch and a beard, and cut off his leg. It served it's purpose)
• Fruity rings/ peachios/life savers (for the port holes)

Make the cake according to directions, except to prevent it from being too fluffy I reduced the water to just 1 cup instead of 1 1/4. I read that idea on one of the reviews on FF and it was great. 

When the cake is cooled cut each round in half. 

Use frosting to layer the 4 halves together (as if you were making a 4 layer 1/2 cake) then wrap in saran wrap and freeze for several hours (I froze it while I was at work, and it was perfect and ready for me when I got home!) 

I trimmed the bottom off so that it would sit flat, or float flat... 

Cover the whole thing with chocolate frosting

Then all you have to do is decorate:

Use a butter knife to make planks on the side of the ship. I melted chocolate chips in a ziplock bag then cut off the corner so that I could pipe out railings onto parchment paper then freeze. I used bamboo skewers for the sails and turned the wrestler into a pirate. 

Note that because we're the pirates of the dinner group the cross bones are a spoon and fork! (the sails are made of parchment that was already out from making

Kevin turned 27 and Kim 23, so we fit 50 candles in the ship!

We had to open the door to keep the fire alarm from going off. Also... the action figure lit on fire... probably best to take it off prior to lighting the fire!

See the very burnt action figure? 

And boy it was delicious!