The Pirate Ship that Should Have Sunk

Sometimes I blog to brag, and sometime I blog to find the humor in life when things go wrong.  This is a post about a cake that went wrong.  Marielle turned 6 recently and wanted a pirate party.  It was a family party with minimal frills, but I told her I would make her a pirate cake.  We got online the night before and started looking for our model.  There were far too many examples of parents who spend no less than 13 hours on their children's pirate ship cakes, but with gentle coaxing and reminders of "let's keep it simple for mom,"  she graciously chose this one.


Looks pretty do-able right?

Here's how mine turned out:

First, the cake baked flat.  That little ship has two layers of cake.  I didn't fill the middle with frosting, because it seemed like, what's the point?

Second, I didn't want to switch to a chocolate frosting recipe and waste using the ingredients I had already purchased.  Note to self, mixing every color of food coloring you have does not make brown.

My go-to frosting was a failure since the whipping cream I bought was grainy and didn't whip up right.  I was scared to serve this to my family since the texture was so weird and I thought we might all die from food poisoning, but... it didn't smell sour and the expiration date was a month away, so we ate it.  (Thankfully, no one died. Come to think of it, Ryan did mention some stomach "issues" later that evening.  Hmmmmm.)

After all my failures, I saw no harm in letting the girls have full reign on the candy decoration.  I blame Jenna entirely for the lopsided cabin window.

Marielle was completely oblivious to my failures.  She loved her cake.  She thought the "brown" color we mixed up looked great, the candy decorations quite lovely, and the cake delicious. I sure love that not so little girl.

 Happy Birthday Pirate Princess!