Sand Castle Cake

I went through a spell of making lots of cakes for FINS (a great place that does swim lessons). I still make their cakes, but I was doing a lot of them in a short time frame and was challenged to come up with lots of swim theme cakes. I varied wildly because I'm not real keen on doing the same cake twice. I like for them to be unique. It's more fun for me, and makes it special for the customer as well when they know nobody has a cake like theirs. These were usually kids' party cakes. This one was fun to do.

   

For some reason, many people like marble cake. I'm not sure why. Personally, I can't stand the stuff. I guess I'm more of a purist and like to taste the different flavors. You can't really do that with marble cake. It's a mash up of flavors that just don't work together in my opinion. I digress. This one was fun to make. The cake was a basic half sheet, which I covered with buttercream icing. The water was simply blue icing, but the rest of the cake was covered with crushed vanilla wafers (I used cheap dollar store generics which actually taste better than the name brand) to give the cake a sand look. If you ice the cake and stick the crumbs on quickly, it work's like a charm and looks great. The sand castle, bucket and shovel are made from rice crispy treats which were then covered for effect. The sand castle was covered with icing then the cookie crumbs. I wanted the turrets and door, so I had to do some carving. If you make rice crispy treats with less marshmallow than what the recipe calls for, they turn rock hard when they cool. Not that I like to eat them that way, but they are excellent for sculpture at that point. I covered the castle with the icing then pressed in the cookie crumbs. The bucket and shovel were covered with fondant to give them the smooth look. The top of the bucket was filled with crumbs to make it look like it was filled with sand. I simply used my finger to push down the icing and sand and spell the kid's name in the sand on the shore. I thought it turned out great and I got lots of compliments on this one.