Gordon's Pirate Cake

This was by far the most detailed cake that I have decorated. I found a pirate ship cake pan that I used as a mold and bought frosting to save some time. I am glad I did because dying all the different colors and piping this cake took close to three hours. All worth the time though, because my little man loved it!

To decorate the cake, I needed to create black, brown, red, yellow, light blue, dark blue, and "sail" colored frosting with a total of 10 different gel dye colors. I went through about twelve 12 inch. piping bags and used #3,5,16, and 21 for my tips. I also used a few techniques that were helpful. The first was to thin out your background color, add a few teaspoons of corn syrup to the already dyed frosting (light blue in this case). A second technique is to cover your finger in cornstartch to smooth out piped frosting. At first you will see the white powder, but it quickly disolves.

Always remember to cover your surface underneath the cake with wax or parchment paper to make sure that you will have a clean slate after decorating!!

Here are the pics: