Pirate Ship/ treasure chest cake - step by step guide please?

[LetThemEatCake]

I've got a Pirate Ship guide from an Australian Women's Weekly cake book but it looks a wee bit tricky and require black icing which I've been told is near-impossible to achieve - can anyone help with instructions for a foolproof pirate ship or treasure chest? I don't have a lot of time to labour over something, sadly (new baby!) so easy yet impressive would be great!!

TIA

you can buy black icing - ready to roll. Fantastic stuff, kids with black teeth

treasure chest would be an easier bet imho, large rectangular chocolate cake, some chocolate butter-icing to make it look wooden, cut a flap off the top and prop open and put a load of yellow and orange (or others?!) jelly sweets inside to make jewels

or, now i think of it, put some gold chocolate coins or the candy necklaces and watches spilling out of it
hehe! we're on a roll!!

I would do a square shape cake with 4 layers, put 2 layers together and cut the middle out of the third and put it on top for the 'inside'
Then cover in buttercream and brown fondant.
Carve the other layer with curvy edges and cover it in brown and have it sitting offcentre so you don;t have to worry about it being 'open.
Fill 'hollow' in cake with chocolate coins and some bright coloured fondant in 'jewel' shapes.
You can get black fondant from some cake shops, try ebay.

You can get gold fondant paint/dust or gold icing here is one shop and then use that to colour some white fondant strips and put it on like chains or a lock.

I've done a pirate ship, it was pretty easy & looked good.

So - I baked 2 x rectangular sponge cakes. Then stuck them one on top of the other with butter icing, and carved to a rough ship shape (ie pointy at one end and square at the other - I made a guide out of card to go on top & cut round). Then used some of the cut out bits to build up the front & back of the ship for higher level decks.

Covered it all in brown 'wood' coloured butter icing (cocoa powder), then a chopstick for a mast, & rice paper for a sail with a skull & crossbones drawn on (by DH) also made from rice paper. Licquorice bootlaces for 'rigging' stretching down from the chopstick to the deck.

Then liquorice coins for the portholes, a pile of more coins for treasure on the deck and jelly babies for pirates.

Chopped green jelly all around the base for sea (whole shebang was stood on a tray)

I didn't do a treasure chest but I guess another square cake, a bit more carving, and plenty of chocolate butter icing & chocolate coins should get you there.

black icing - I've seen it in morrisons, asda, tesco, sainsburys

yellow marzipan also makes lovely "gold"

Easy, and impressive - here goes! Cover cake board in yellow butter icing. Place on it 1 oblong bought madeira cake, and rest against it at an angle. half another cake the same size, cut through laterally. Cover all liberally in chocolate butter icing and use fork to make wood effect . Place in open chest your choice of - gold and silver foil coins, small foil covered eggs and dolly mixtures, plus dotted around on 'sand', some of those Guylian seashell shaped chocolates (for the grown-ups!). Works a treat, dead impressive and very, very easy.

I did a fabby treasure chest cake - it was my best-ever cake I think.

You bake a rectangular cake (Nigella's buttermilk recipe is good) and then cut into 3 - two equal bits, the bulk of the cake, but a thin rectangle in the middle abotu 3cm across. THIS you cut in half diagonally and use these bits as wedges to hold the lid over the base (the other two bits)

Does that make sense at all? I promise it is totally easy. Cover with choc butter icing (more appetising than black IMHO) and then ice in bands of white icing to mark the hasps (if that is what they are called). Decorate with silver balls. Fill with gold choc coins, sweetie necklaces and Haribo rings as gigglewitch says.

here you go this is the link a pal sent me which explains the wedges better than I have.

Lots of helpful advice on this thread

Somewhere deep down I think I have my heart set on a ship, since I know that my 2yo ds will 'get' the association more than he would do with a chest ... I like the sound of what Takver has described, sounds very similar to my AWW guide but without scary skewers and bits of precariously balanced cake!!
And DOH, why did i not think about choc icing instead of black??? Baby brain!!

Thanks all

LTEC if you need to do a ship, can I suggest using playmobil people to add to the illusion.

I did one one year and while not in the league of the treasure chest it was still pretty cool.