The Cake

Several months ago, Darcy mentioned that she wanted her birthday cake to look like a sea star. I figured that should be doable. I had thought about farming out the task to our local fabulous cake-maker, but she was unavailable, so I went in search of a star-shaped pan. That didn't work out. Nobody wanted to sell me one and I couldn't find anyone who owned one to lend out. I did find a silicon pan that makes six small star-shaped cakes. So I decided that the plan had to become a tide pool seascape.

Let me digress for a moment. There is a blog called Cake Wrecks that pokes fun at professionally-made cakes for various crimes. Like terrible mis-spellings or bizarre themes ("Sorry I peed in your bed" anyone?). Some of the cakes are very seriously disturbing, so if you like cake and don't want to have to bleach your eyeballs in order to enjoy your next piece, just take my word for it and skip the blog.

In between having all the elements for my cake complete, but before starting to put them together, a friend happened to post a link to a Cake Wrecks post. Suddenly, I had some fear that I was about to create a Cake Wreck. While the cake didn't turn out exactly how I'd pictured it, it was not a wreck.

Here's the main cake. It's a brownie cake with blue water frosting and an ochre sea star gracing the top. I should have taken a picture once the candles went in. About five or six months ago, we saw some really cool shark candles at a toy store. Hoping that Darcy's obsession with the sea would last this long, we slid some onto the counter while she wasn't watching. Surprisingly enough, the small ones mostly asked for pieces from the other cake:

Again, the cakes are brownies frosted with cream cheese frosting and the "sand" was three kinds of crushed cookies to get the mix of colors and textures just right. One of the party guests came back for seconds of sand, so I think it was a hit.