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.

Next, I decided to pipe the top edge so that when I added the graham cracker "sand" the piping would act as a barrier to keep the sand from falling off.  It worked GREAT for the graham cracker crumbs!  Just to let you know though, it did make adding the gel for the water a little trickier than it would have been without the piping there.  

After the piping was complete, I sprinkled crushed up graham crackers all over the brown frosting to look like sand.  

This is what it looks like after the beach is all on.  You can stop here if you want...

Or you can add piping gel!  Piping gel comes in a small container that you can purchase at JoAnn's or Michaels.  I added just a touch of blue food coloring.  Then I smeared the gel on to the cake, right on top of the blue buttercream, being careful to just set a layer on top and not mix them together.

Here is a close up.

I added some piping to the bottom and popped the cake back in the refrigerator for a bit.

There are a ton of options for decorating this cake.  You can do a red X with little dotted lines, add gold coins or pearls, use small pirate toys or do as I did and use scrap booking stickers.  I taped toothpicks to the backs of the stickers and stuck them right in the cake.  Some people might think this is cheating, but hey, I'm just a mom making a cake for a friend's birthday party.  The kids love it and it makes it easier on me.  

I pushed a few gold coins in the side to jazz it up a bit too.

I think the kids always like to have their names somewhere on the cake so the last thing I did was add Reese's name and I was finished!  See!  It's pretty simple and it's pretty cute.  Just a little heads up... the kids ALL want to eat the water side.  So plan accordingly and make sure you make the ocean big enough for all of the little pirates to enjoy!