Ahoy! Pirate Ship cake.

by Georganne
(Fountain, Colorado)

I used 3 boxes of cake mix. I baked each of them in a 9 x 13 inch pan. I drew the basic shape of a ship on a piece of paper, put it on the cooled cakes, and cut the shape out of each of them. I filled the cakes with chocolate butter cream frosting and stacked them. After they were stacked, I cut down at an angle so that the bottom of the cake was narrower than the top. I added pieces from the leftover cake on top to increase the height of the deck.

I used chocolate marshmallow fondant to decorate the cake. I rolled it out and then cut planks out of it. I used a sucker stick to make nail holes and lightly pressed with a pizza cutter to make the wood grain. Starting at the bottom, I pieced the wood planks together to cover the ship's hull and deck. The upper part of the hull was covered in one piece of fondant that was rolled lightly with the pizza cutter to make it look like thinner planks of wood.Then I painted it with gold luster dust to make it look old. For each cannon, I rolled to balls of fondant. One I flattened, and the other I made flat on two sides. I put them together with a tiny bit of water and then attached them to the side of the cake. The windows in the back were cut out of fondant and painted with silver luster dust to make them look shiny.

For the deck, I rolled tootsie roll shaped logs out of the fondant and placed them along the edges of the deck. Then I cut a thin rope out of the fondant and carefully placed it across them. The sails are made of paper. I brushed them with vegetable oil, and put them in a 200 degree oven for 5 minutes. (BE VERY VERY CAREFUL THAT YOU DO NOT LEAVE THEM. THEY WILL CATCH FIRE QUICKLY!!!!) I threaded the sails on dowels that I had painted with brown food coloring.

I placed the entire cake on a cardboard cake round that I had spread blue royal icing on to look like waves.