This blog is mainly intended to regularly share my tested recipes with other foodies. But although my bakings are mostly meant to be eaten, every once in a while, a creation leaves my kitchen that is almost too cool to be eaten — if I may say so myself. These cakes/pies/cookies are not always very challenging to the home baker but they do deserve to be in the spot light for a bit.

So, those babies go into the ‘Showoff post’-category, and today I’d like to share with you the pirate ship birthday cake I made for my little foster brother, who turned six recently. I gratefully acknowledge the help of my fiancee, who turns out to have a hidden talent for working with fondant.

For the curious cats among you, this is how we got there:

One day ahead, we started molding the sails (just lay them out to dray on empty toilet paper rolls), cannons, and masts (fondant wrapped around a skewer). Next, we used an edible black marker to draw a skull and crossbone on one of the sails, and tylose -edible glue- to fix the sails to the masts.

The base was made out of a regular sponge cake. I used a a little leftover chocolate buttercream (=half custard+half butter+nutella to taste) to form a delicious middle layer and to smear the outside so the fondant would stick.

The ship was made out of a few layers of boat-like shapes (cut out of a flat brownie) and pieced together using some more chocolate buttercream. We then covered the outside with a piece of brown fondant, and drew on a wood structure-look using a skewer.

Needless to say, all the boys -and girls-  were impressed and fighting over who got to eat which part. (btw: those waves are just some whipped cream, piped with a decorating tip intended for piping ribbons)