Easy Homemade Pirate Cake

Here is an easy to make pirate cake that the kids go nuts for.  Even if you don't decorate a lot of cakes, this is one you should be able to tackle.  

I made a double cake and frosted a crumb coat.  As you can see, this cake was very crumbly!  After the all important crumb coat, I stuck the cake in the refrigerator for about 20 minutes to let the crumb coat harden.

Next I frosted the sides of the cake in blue buttercream.  Then I used a toothpick to draw an outline of where I wanted the ocean and beach to be.  I spread brown icing on the beach side and blue icing on the ocean side.  The nicest part about this cake is that you don't have to get any of the frosting smooth!  Just smear it on!  I even used my spatula to make the water extra wavy.

Easy Bear Cake

 My son just had a camping themed birthday party and I wanted to make a special cake for him.  After searching the internet and Pinterest we decided that a bear cake would be perfect!  Even though this cake looks difficult, it's one of the easiest I've ever done!  You can totally do it too!

I came across an adorable polar bear cake here.  I loved it and decided it would be the cake to use as inspiration for my son's.

Here's what I did...

Construction Cake With a Twist!

If you are looking for a little change in your standard construction cake, here is one I did using the same technique as I used on my other construction cakes...but this time I changed the colors a bit!  Check it out!

Here is the original cake I posted.  And here is a tutorial for a similar cake if you want to know how to do this yourself.

Just changing the colors a bit gave it a totally different feel.  I actually ended up using my cousin's construction vehicles once we got to her house.  They were red and blue and looked adorable.  

King Piggy Cake from Angry Birds!

 My little one loves the Pig King from Angry Birds so he asked me to make him a cake with him as the main focus.  I had no clue how to do this but I stumbled through it and it turned out pretty cute.  Here is what my little one's cake looked like for his super fun Angry Birds party!

Ta-dah!  One homemade (and not perfect) King Piggy cake!  He loved it!  

Here's what I did...

I made a 4 layer cake, alternating yellow and chocolate.  And I put homemade chocolate buttercream in between each layer.  I used wrapping paper to cover my cake board.

Cars Cake Tutorial

A lot of people have sent me questions about the construction cake I posted a few months ago.  This weekend I made a similar cake so I figured I'd turn it into a mini tutorial which may help.  

DISCLAIMER!!!!  

I am not a cake decorator.  I'm just a mom who likes to try to make cool cakes for my kiddos and their friends.  My way may not be the RIGHT way but it's the way that works for me.  Hopefully you can take some of the ideas here and tweak them to work for you. 

You can totally make this cake!  It's pretty simple!

This is the tip I used...the "grass tip".

Star Wars Cake

As you know my son is having a Star Wars party (...in just 2 days)!  He requested an R2D2 cake, so this is my attempt at it.  This cake was not difficult to make but it was REALLY time consuming.  I broke it up into a couple of days; one for baking, one for assembling, and one for the details.  If I did it again, I'd make two attempts at the details.  My hand was really sore after all of the piping.  

So here's what I did...I made one cake in a glass bowl for the top of his head.   I also made 4 eight inch round cakes.  I stacked the rounds with frosting in between the layers and I added several dowels for support.  Then I placed the head on top.  I did a quick crumb coat and put it back in the fridge.  After about twenty minutes I put a smooth layer of white icing all around the cake.  I did this before I added the legs so I could get it as smooth as possible.  

Next I used store bought Rice Crispy Treats for the legs.  I used 2 on each side for the height.  I rounded the tops and then added little triangles to the bottom to give his legs the right shape.  I attached the legs with frosting and put a layer of frosting on the outside of them too.  Then I put R2 back in the refrigerator until the next day.

A for Effort???

My husband's friend requested a Storm Trooper cake for his son's party.  His wife found a youtube video showing how one mom made it so I thought I'd give it a try.  Next month my oldest son is having a Star Wars party so this was going to be good practice.  Most of the examples on the internet are made with fondant, which I don't use.  Unfortunately, the cake was WAY harder than it looked and didn't turn out that great.  However, I thought the technique was pretty cool and could be tweaked to make lots of different of cakes.  So, here's how I did it...not my best work, but definitely my best effort.

I made simple syrup for the first time, with equal parts sugar and water that I boiled in a pot.  I added a whole lemon to it as well.  Then I used buttercream frosting and my Kitchen Aid mixing bowl as a mold.

I lined my Kitchen Aid bowl.  Plastic wrap would work but I usually end up annoyed with it so I went with good old wax paper instead.

Chocolate Buttercream...Who knew?

My cousin's son was having a construction themed party so it was time to revamp a cake I made for my son at his own digger party a year and a half ago.

The cake was yellow and this was my first attempt at CHOCOLATE buttercream!  Yum!

The chocolate buttercream turned out to be the perfect color for mud.  When I originally made this cake for my son's 3rd birthday I used regular buttercream and added brown food coloring.  I wasn't completely happy with the color.  This is much richer looking and tasting!

Toy Story Mania Cake

It's tradition!  I always make birthday cakes for my children's two best friends' birthday parties.  Each year they "put their order in" and look forward to having a fancy cake to go along with their birthday theme. Apparently they think I'm some kind of professional baker because the requests are getting harder and harder.  I usually panic at first and decide there is no way I can possibly make the cake they requested (this is also true for the cakes my own kids request) but then I quickly realize that the kids don't really care if the cake is perfect which allows me to relax a little and get to work.


For Reese's Toy Story cake I knew I didn't want to attempt making a specific character.  I also work strictly with buttercream so getting that perfectly smooth fondant look is usually out of the question. 


For the bottom layer, I decided to go with a Buzz theme.  I used a butter knife as a straight edge for my lines and a large decorating tip to make circle indentations.  Then I went back and iced over them.

Bottom layer completed!

The second layer was Woody inspired.  I don't usually make layered cakes so luckily I remembered to use dowels in the two bottom layers (something I learned the hard way on a previous cake) and I put a glob of frosting underneath each layer to adhere them together.