Step-by-step photo instructions on how to create a pirate ship birthday cake from two 9-inch round chocolate sponge cakes.
A pirate party!
Not every day one’s child turns three; a celebration is required!
What better cake for a swash-buckling, pirate-obsessed three-year-old than this pirate ship cake, in full chocolate coma-inducing splendour?
It’s super easy to make too.
You will need
- 2 nine-inch round sponge cakes – I used Clara’s Arizona devil’s food cake recipe.
- Chocolate frosting – lots of it! You’ll need three times as much as you usually use to frost an ordinary 9-inch sponge cake.
- 8 rollo sweets – for the port holes
- Quality Street Matchmakers – for the gunwales.
- White ready-to-roll icing – for the decorative base.
- Blue and green food colouring – to paint water on the base.
- White frosting – to pipe your message on the water.
- Sails – dowel rods, black paper, skull and crossbones.
How to make it
- Bake two 9-inch round chocolate cakes. Allow to cool completely.
- Cut the domed top off one cake so it is flat, and cut both cakes in half through the middle, as shown.
- Using chocolate frosting, sandwich together all four pieces of chocolate cake, with the flat pieces on the inside and the domed pieces on the outside ends.
- Cut a few inches off the curved edge of the layered cakes. This will form the base of the pirate ship.
- Roll out some white, ready-to-roll icing, and paint waves on in blue and green food colouring.
- Place the cakes with the pirate ship base down, on the painted icing ‘sea’. Using a 2DZ piping nozzle, pipe wooden ‘planks’ along the sides.
- Add Rolo portholes, Quality Street Matchmaker gunwales, and pirate sails.
Project Difficulty Levels
Easy
Requires basic cooking skills and ingredients you most likely already have in your kitchen.
Moderate
Requires more experience, preparation and/or cooking time. You may have to source special ingredients.
Challenging
Recipes requiring more advanced skills and experience and maybe some special equipment.
How to make a pirate ship birthday cake – step by step printable instructions
Ingredients
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Equipment
Instructions
- Bake two 9-inch round chocolate cakes. Allow to cool completely.
- Cut the domed top off one cake so it is flat, and cut both cakes in half through the middle, as shown.
- Using chocolate frosting, sandwich together all four pieces of chocolate cake, with the flat pieces on the inside and the domed pieces on the outside ends.
- Cut a few inches off the curved edge of the layered cakes. This will form the base of the pirate ship.
- Roll out some white ready-to-roll icing, and paint waves on in blue and green food colouring.
- Place the cakes with the pirate ship base down, on the painted icing 'sea'. Using a 2DZ piping nozzle, pipe wooden 'planks' along the sides.
- Add Rolo portholes, Quality Street Matchmaker gunwales, and pirate sails. Make your sails by cutting isosceles trapezoid shapes (rectangles with a shorter top than bottom) out of black sugar paper and skewering them through the top and bottom with a wooden dowel rod.
Clara’s Arizona Devil’s Food Cake
Oh how clever! This is the sort of thing one of my nephews would love. Come to think of it, it’s the sort of thing I’d love being a massive PotC fan and an even bigger chocolate fan =)
Made this for my sons birthday. The instructions made it so easy. Did cheat a bit by using Betty Crockers Devil Food Cake Mix and her Chocolate Fudge Icing. Piccie here: http://t.co/L0rAIDOoQA.
Brilliant – particularly the step by step pictures!
Looks fabulous 🙂 Vxx