So, how do you make a Pirate Birthday Cake?

We're gonna find out....

First, you beg your mom for an easy recipe (in English) from the family books at home (and what she would do differently to them!). Then you take a lot of cooking stuff, two different online German to English cooking translators, an online US to Metric translator, a nifty apron (like my brother had made for me), and then you cross your fingers....

You mix all the stuff together and bake it...

Then, this is the part where I'm gonna tell you that everything went perfectly (the first time) and that it took no time at all! Oh, and it turned out looking just like the Lady Washington! Amazing....

Okay, so....in all actuality....the first cake turned out just great and even came out of the oven early and perfectly golden brown! Then, somehow, I must have turned the dial on the oven to hotter while reaching for something, or something, and so the outside was done and the inside was not. Bummer. So, I turned the oven way down and moved it to the bottom shelf where I hoped that it would quickly cook the inside without the outside burning. Well, it didn't quite work that way! But it was okay, but not perfect like the first one. Oh well.

Then, when I attached it to the first one with the chocolate frosting (that I also made from scratch), it proceeded to fall apart....taking the chocolate frosting with it. Crud. So, finally, I decided that it was just plain not gonna work, but the first cake was still good, so I took off the second one and put it aside (well, technically a lot of it ended up on the floor and counters and the rest of it ended up in Ann-Katrin and her friends' stomachs.) But anyway, no harm done. Then I frosted the entire first cake all well-and-good, but it wouldn't stand up because it didn't have the other cake to support it. Just took some interesting creativity (and a little more confectioner's sugar) to make another entire batch of frosting, this time dyed blue, and a new dish to make the ocean to hold up the ship! Woohoo. (Well, it mostly works. Meh.) Then I decorated and decorated and decorated! Hooray! My favorite part. I made waves around the boat, pirates and cannnon candles for the side! And even a mermaid for the front! And I gotta say....for a novice making a cake for a 5 year old boy, it's pretty impressive....See?