I think this has been done before buuuut, pirate galleon bithday cakes - any tips??

[spiderslegs]

Am making a galleon cake for my son's party on Saturday - any tips before I put my supermarket order in (other than you should have started last week....)

don't use paper sails and then light the candles

no

really.

I sorta cheated when I did this one. Decorated the cake with pale golden royal ciing (sand) and bought great little pirate figures, mermaid figures, mini chest, silver balls and gold coins to be the treasure.

Obviously because I am not very talented.

No boat. So it wasn't really galleon was it. I'm thinking of bullion.

Jelly babies for pirates
Chocolate or licoricque (sp?) coins
Strawberry bootlaces for rigging
Rice paper for sails
Dark food colouring for painting the skull & crossbones

Mix up lots and lots of butter icing before you start because its impossible to match the colour on a second batch (voice of painful experience here)

Ohh - thanks for the tips, have already bought little pirate figures etc, & strawberry bootlaces for the rigging (little bit worried about how I'm actually going to rig though)

Good tip with the icing - will make up a hundredweight & stick any extra in my mouth on buns.

Was also thinking Rolos for cannons.

Quite like the idea of the sails going up though - sort of goes with the theme does it not?

We used chopsticks for masts, spiked the sails through them, then ran the rigging from the top of the chopsticks (tied + icing) down

Use madeira cake if you want to carve without leaving lots of crumbs.

I used the mini wafer rolls for the cannons and stuck it with melted chocolate.

Make windows by using piped chocolate on thin bits of white chocolate.

Maltesers for cannon balls.

Pipe an anchor and fix it to the deck.

I've got a phot of a pirate ship cake that I did last year.

That's photo obviously! On my profile.

You can buy one from waitrose!

Boogie, brilliant, also love the Starwars one, have ordered madeira cake (even though am a fab baker - have left it to Waitrose...), ordered six blocks.

Mini wafer rolls - good tip - as is maltesers.

Will post the finished article (even if crap).

Although have done wonderful tractor cake before am a little concerned about my poop deck collapsing (surely one for childbirth....)

We used playmobil pirates, curly wurlys as sides/bars, polos for portholes and stuck the candles horizontally on the sides so they looked like cannons.