Pirate ship birthday cake

I just had to share this! This is the pirate ship cake that I made for my SS's pirate-themed 9th birthday party. Feel free to contact me for more information or tips.

Here is the recipe: Pirate ship birthday cake

Some advice:

- Read all of the comments from other people who have made the cake. They were really helpful!

- Bake the cake the night before you need it. Let it sit in the pan for 15 minutes. Then flip the pan over into your hand to get the cake out, and then flip it over onto a tray to cool (so it's sitting on the bottom again). If you flip it over onto it's top, the top of the cake will peel off.

- Let it cool completely, then gently cut each cake into halves using a large bread knife. To make the layers sit evenly on top of each other, you can also gently trim the rounded part of the top of the cake off just a little bit.

- Make sure your frosting has been sitting out at room temperature. Stir it with a knife to soften it up. Spread icing between each layer, then stack the layers on top of each other.

- You might need an extra person for this next part:

- Once you have all 4 halves stacked together with icing in the middle, gently trim the rounded bottom (just a little!) so it will sit upright without falling over. I had to hold the cake still while DH trimmed the bottom.

- Once that is done, stick two drinking straws through the cakes to hold them together. If you have a straw with the bendy section, I trimmed it off just above the ridges and then it was the perfect length. I put one in each side, so the ridge was just barely poking out so it would be easy to grab later.

- Wrap the whole thing in plastic wrap and freeze overnight.

- You may not believe me, but now you're done with the hardest part!

- Take the cake out of the freezer about 3 hours before you need to serve it. Just let it thaw on the counter for the 3 hours.

- After it has thawed, remove the saran wrap but leave the straws inside. You won't remove them under you cut the cake.

- Sit the cake on the bottom edge that you cut off on whatever serving tray you are going to use. You aren't moving it after this point.

- Ice the whole thing with chocolate icing. Use a knife to etch long lines into the icing to make it look like wood planks.

- Break the piroutte cookie sticks into the right size and put along the top edge for the railing.

- Use the end of a wooden skewer to poke holes in the round wafer cookies to get the red candles to fit into. Then gently push the chocolate wafer cookies into the side of the cake. You have to sort of twist them in a circular motion to get them inside.

- Put your paper sails (it's fun if you have a child decorate them!) onto the wooden skewers and place them in the top of the cake.

- Put a few root beer barrels ("gun powder barrels"), gold wrapped rolos ("gold treasure"), and whoppers ("cannon balls") on the top of the cake. Add a few plastic pirate figures. Add a kit kat bar as a "wooden plank" (this is kind of tricky b/c it's heavy and starts to fall down).

That's it! Enjoy!