The only thing that matters...

So far today... is that I have a day off of work!

I work in a high call volume call center and there's nothing like the dreary ... January-esque weather to make people call in and complain about how high their bills still are.

So that means... I get to email back and forth with a friend of mine longer this morning before she has to go off and leave me... usually it's the other way around. .. And then I get to run errands that I don't find time to do on weekends...laundry... and other fun stuff...!

Okay so I know it's been a while since I made this, but I do actually have pictures of it so I'm going to post them now to kick off the 'baking' side of myself...

I present to you... Pirate Ship Cake... !

I made this for our Halloween party at work, our team did a Pirates theme so we based on the movies and turned our manager's office ... there's 3 cubicles... into the Black Pearl... and then for the most part, all of us dressed as pirates or wenches for Halloween.

So there was nothing else to do but make a pirate ship cake.

I learned several things about pirate ships... well, cake versions. And the first is that you shouldn't expect to make it in one night. LOL

Here it is on my counter. Isn't it lovely...?

So my hugest mistake... and the thing I would do differently if I make it again... is that I cut the 2 round cakes in half and THEN tried to frost them and stick them together.

I would fill them and then freeze them BEFORE cutting them in half. That way they'd probably stick together better. And then the whole cake has to be able to stay in the freezer as much as possible.

This is before work so it's beautiful and lovely... The 'deck' is made out of 2 twinkies toothpicked into the top of the cake. and the rails are rolled wafer cookies.

I took pieces of a black plastic tablecloth to stretch and tear into little flags for the ship and had a few playmobil pirates for the top of it as well. Also... Nestle crunch sticks for cannons, brown sixlets for cannonballs and some root beer barrels... after all, a pirate's gotta have some rum!

I was worried about not having enough cake, so I baked a chocolate cake in a really cool pan I have... It has a hollow in the top so that you can fill it and make a really nice looking strawberry shortcake cake... or put a pirate ship in an ocean. The 'ocean' is chocolate cake frosted with storebought from the bakery frosting that was pale blue... I added green to make it that lovely shade and then dusted the whole thing with blue sugar so that it would sparkle.

Unfortunately... as soon as I frosted the ship and put it in the fridge, it started to fall apart so when I got to work, in spite of trying to insert additional skewers to hold it together, it was looking very decidedly as though it had come under attack from another ship. ;o) But it was cute and people were impressed anyway that I'd made it.