A Beachy Birthday Cake

For Noah's third birthday this year I decided to make his birthday cake. I have always admired the way my Nana always made her children's birthday cakes- and they were always super cute and creative. I found my inspiration cake (because there's no way I would have come up with this myself) in a Parent's magazine. It was in a Luau party guide- perfect since we were having his birthday party at the Splash Pad. Here's how it turned out. It's obviously not perfect, but I was happy with it!

And, here's how I made it:

1. Make a cake! I used a box mix, duh! Separate the batter into two round cake pans and a small oven safe bowl (for the island). Let cakes cool completely before icing.

2. For the icing, again I used store bought icing because it made my life that much easier. Tint about 2/3 of the icing aqua blue, and the rest divide and tint into colors of your choice (for the swimsuits on the bears and the piping on the huts).

3. Once the cakes are cool, ice the first layer, then put the second one on top and ice that one. For the island you can ice with white icing or tint it to match the brown sugar. Sprinkle the iced island generously with brown sugar to look like sand. Note* The instructions said to use crushed shortbread cookies, but I forgot to buy those, so I improvised and used brown sugar.

4. Place the island on top of the cake and use remaining blue icing to make "waves" on the edge of the island. This helps blend the island in with the rest of the cake.

5. Decorate the cake! You can use colorful icing to put little swimsuits on the teddy grahams. For the huts, stick starburst candies together in the shape of a hut, and for the roof, use mini shreaded wheat cereal and finish with piped icing. Use peach rings for floats, swedish fish for fish, round peppermints for a beach ball, and jelly beans and nerds for the under water rocks along the bottom of the cake. I used green twizzlers and cut them into the shape of sea plants for the bottom of the cake as well.

This is a really fun cake to make with your kids. Noah had a blast helping me make it/eating all the candy while helping me make it. The only downside to it is you're left with all that extra candy...