Timeout with J+S: Pirate cake

I had no idea what theme do have for Jaemie's 3rd birthday.

The start of the year it was all about Octonauts, Spiderman, Hulk, Batman, Ironman, Dinosaurs and Dragons. With such a plethora of ideas and Jaemie constantly changing his mind, I was slowly resolved to choose the theme which would be easiest for me.

A month out from September I decided that it was going to be pirate themed. It was very timely that ABC Tv also had a pirate marathon a week out from the party.

I ran around to Reject shops, Hot dollar shops and Spotlight sourcing a pirate boat piñata, chocolate coins, pirate party bags, table covers, pirate ouffit and gold coins. Ordered 18 red and black helium filled balloons to be picked up on the day of the party. Ordered rice paper rolls from our local Vietnamese takeaway and my gal pal's mum was making her amazing curry puffs.

I also wanted do a something homemade so I made up spy glasses with toilet rolls wrapped in blue and black stripes wrapping paper. Pepe was going to help out and make balloon cutlasses for the lads and lasses which I thought would mean less danger for the kids running around.

Printed off a pirate labels to cover the kid's drinks and made pirate boat jelly. Such great ideas and quite effective looking on the table. Stumbled across a great site for printing off the pirate flags. http://www.makeandtakes.com/summer-camp-for-kids-pirate-day-arrrrr

The other dilemma was how I was going to make a pirate ship birthday cake. I love getting ideas from the internet and there were rather elaborate with fondant to birthday cakes decorated with buttercream which were equally effective.

I didn't want to cut up the cake without having a paper mock up of what shapes I needed to cut. Thank goodness I did, as it would have been a disaster. Geometry definitely came in handy to makes sure that all the cut shapes fitted together to make the cake.

I made 2 rectangular cakes, one was flavoured chocolate and other was caramel flavoured. Then this was glued altogether with chocolate ganache. Once the ganache set, I used a fork to scrape the ganache to give it a wooden look.

I decided that I was going to use fondant for the detailing such as the pirate figurine, treasure chest, steering wheel, cannon and 3 cannon balls, railings around the boat.

Thank goodness for Miss N's skull and crossbone cookie cutters that I was able to borrow for this event. It was great fun to make gingerbread biscuits with Jaemie and see his expression change to joy when the cookies turned out perfectly. What a relief to not decorate as they looked perfect.