Every birthday my son flicks through the ‘Australian Women’s Weekly Kids Birthday Cakes’ book to choose his cake. This year he announced he’d like the pirate ship cake. Eeek! Although it’s a truly legendary book (I had to scour e-bay to get a copy) its problem lies in that some of the ingredients are only available down under. Thus I turned to the trusty Google for some further inspiration and some pictures of cakes that I could copy – and with ingredients that I could buy in the UK
Well, you would not believe the amount of smug mothers who post pictures of their cake creations on the internet. I found a website called Coolest Birthday Cakes where there were in fact no less than 80 pictures of Pirate Ship cakes posted from all over the world – from Manchester to the Philippines! It really is fantastic website and I’m happy to give them a plug and a link here.
Anyway having used the website for inspiration and plagiarism, once I’d finished the cake I decided to draw the line at uploading a photo to it. I was however so fantastically impressed with my own creation I decided to put a picture of it here and lavish you with details of how you can create any sort of cake they ask for – without feeling you’ve got to cut it quickly and get it in the party bags before anyone sees it!
This blog is supposed to be a recipe site but the big cheat is that there’s barely no recipe this time.
Tescos sell slabs of plain un-iced Madeira cake for little over a pound. I used six of these - stacking four of them to create the oblong hull of the boat and then I laid the other two across the front and back creating the raised decks. Allow the rear one to overhang the back of the boat. I used some icing to sandwich the slabs together and then I cut the front diagonally to resemble the bow.
I then covered the cake with 2 batches of Delia Smiths Chocolate Fudge Icing. This is great icing as it sets nicely and gives a great shine. The recipe is on her Delia Online website and in her Complete Cookery Course book. I then decorated the ship using Rolos down the side for canons, Maltesers stacked on the deck as canon balls, Curly Wurly (cut in half lengthways) for barriers around the deck. I then printed out a birthday message on some white card and cut out 4 sails and a jolly roger (plenty on Google images) and thread these onto kebab sticks. I cut two of the sails bigger than the others for a more authentic look. Voilà!
Whilst the shop bought cake might be a bit heavy on additives, cutting this corner does give you more time to be creative with the icing and decoration and ultimately each child is not going to have very much of it. It’s cheap enough to buy plenty of slaps and play around at creating any shape cake you want. If you want the icing a different colour then use white sugar and white chocolate in the icing recipe and then use a drop of food colouring to create the colour you need.
Having discovered these slabs of sponge you really can build any shaped cake you like – just turn to the smug mums for inspiration! www.coolest-birthday-cakes.com
