Sand castle cake

Well my little man is celebrating his 6th birthday so it was time to get a little crazy in the kitchen and make him a truly awesome cake. Since we decided on a pool party a sand castle cake seemed very fitting along with ice cream cone cupcakes. This is definitely not a small cake, I made a triple batch of vanilla cake (vegan cupcakes take over the world) to make the tiers of the sand castle. There was some extra cake left over after I cut out the 2 smaller circles, but still a lot of cake. Once it was fully assembled it was also very tall so I really just have to leave it sit out on the tray which is why I made it pretty last minute.

I made a 8-inch round cake and a 9 by 13-inch cake as this was what I had on hand (the directions actually suggested a 9-inch square be made to cut the smaller circles out of. Once both cakes were baked and had cooled I cut out the 2 smaller circles, one 3 1/2-inches and one 5 1/2-inches. Once all the layers were cut out it was time to make some vanilla buttercream frosting (vegan cupcakes take over the world) to put the cakes together. After the cakes were frosted and stacked it was time to put graham cracker crumbs on top of the frosting as the sand. Then I put the ice cream cone cupcakes on the cake, I used toothpicks to hold them steady on the cake (you don't have to bake cupcakes in them, they probably wouldn't need to be steadied with toothpicks if they weren't cupcakes). Then I topped the ice cream cones with sugar cones to finish the towers of the sand castle. Now I put 2 full height graham cracker sticks on the front of the cake as the doors and then put half height graham cracker sticks around the rest of the 3 tiers and then put some more graham cracker crumbs on top of the cake to make sure all the frosting was covered up. After I added all the candles I showed my son his cake and he told me it was the best cake ever. I am so very happy that he really loves his birthday cake.