Flying Dutchman Cake

A pirateship cake for a halloween party. The instructable has 2 parts, an easy beginner part and an advanced inspirational part with additional decorations. The cake will look like the Flying Dutchman carried by waves with a fearsome mouth.

4 different icings are used in this instructable:

• chocolate icing
• sugar icing
• meringue
• gummy bear icing (coloured gelatine)

Since the gifted Christine McConnell is going to judge our entries and she seems to like The Dunwich Horror, I added some Halloween decor and a Davy Jones with tentacles. Whatever floats your barque, girl ..

• 100 grams chocolate coating (3.5 ounces)
• 250 grams butter (8.8 ounces)
• 200 grams sugar (7 ounces)
• 300 grams flour (10.5 ounces)
• 5 eggs
• 1 half package baking powder

For the chocolate icing look here!

• Rice paper (Bánh tráng)
• Spaghetti
• Chocolate bars
• Gummy bears
• Chocolate beans

• Handheld electric mixer
• Kitchen container
• Kitchen scale
• Double boiler
• Loaf pan
• Dough spoon

Additional equipment:

• Egg separator
• Spatula

Preheat oven to 180°C (350°F). Temper the chocolate in a double boiler. Meanwhile separate the eggs into 2 different containers with egg whites and egg yolks. Weigh the sugar and the flour.

Add the sugar and the butter to the container with the egg yolks. Use your electric mixer with dough hooks. Once you got a homogeneous batter, add the tempered chocolate coating.

Stir again. Now mix the flour with the baking powder and add the mix to your batter. Again, stir.

Whip the egg whites until they are stiff and thick enough. When you hold it upside down everything should stay in its place.

Use a dough spoon to mix the stiff egg white with the rest of the batter. Be gentle because we dont want too much air escape that we just whipped into the egg whites.

Grease the pan with butter, do not use vegetable oil as it will polymerize and turn into a hard glaze. Add breadcrumbs to make it easier to get the cake out of the loaf pan or use the same flour that you used for the dough. Fill the pan with the batter and place it in the oven. Bake for 50 minutes. Meanwhile we can prepare the sails.

For children I prefer to make all decorations from edible stuff. You could make the masts with wooden sticks, but then again you could not be present when some kids suddenly decide to go for a saberplay with them.

Ingredients:

• Rice paper (Bánh tráng)
• Spaghetti as masts
• Some water

Water makes the rice paper soft, put some on your index and thumb so you can rub a spot on both sides. Stick the spaghetti through and let it all dry.

After 50 minutes take the pan out of the oven and flip it to get the cake out. Let it cool down.

Cut the top in a skewed way, we want the ship look like it is carried by the waves. The symmetrical bottom of the cake becomes the body of the ship, so we lay it on the surface we have just cut. Don't throw the top away, we will use it to form a quarterdeck and a dreadful mouth in the advanced version.

Ingredients:

• 250 grams chocolate coating
• 4 tablespoons milk
• 1 tablespoon butter

Instructions:

Temper the chocolate in a double boiler. When you can stir the chocolate, you can add the other ingredients and stir until you have a consistent mass. Apply the icing on the cake with a spatula or a spoon and create a smooth surface. Remains in the double boiler can have some sedimentations, add some icing sugar and stir again to make use of the remains.

Create a gun ridge with chocolate or candy bars on top of the cake, stick the sails in the mid and set up a crew of gummy bears. Take the chocolate beans and create the appearance of a gun deck. Either by pressing them into the cake or glueing them with a sugar icing.

Ingredients:

• 50 grams powdered sugar
• 1 tabelspoon of hot water

Stir the mix, apply to one side of the chocolate bean and then press it on the cake until you are sure it won't fall off. If the icing is too wet add some honey.

Now we have a pirate ship cake for our Halloween party that is safe for children. Good job and enjoy your cake!

This is the end of the easy beginner part, for the advanced version, continue reading!

We will add meringue around the ship as spindrift, a ship's wheel, a mouth, a quarterdeck, a Jolly Roger to the sails and a Davy Jones. Inspirations are taken from the ship in the movie Pirates of the Caribbean.

Meringue recipes are like snowflakes, there are endless variants and not 2 who are the same. You will find recipes for the very same ingredients but one says bake for 12 minutes and let them dry for 4 hours or another says bake them for 2 hours. The one that I use is easy, takes a bit more time in preparation but you can immediately tell from the taste if your result will be good.

Ingredients:

• 2 egg whites
• 80 mg icing sugar
• 1 pinch salt
• 1 drop lemon juice

• Kitchen scale
• Electric mixer
• Sifter (with spoon)
• Silicon baking mat
• Kitchen container
• pastry bag

Sift the icing sugar into the kitchen container. Tip the egg whites and make sure there is no yellow of an egg. Any fat can ruin the meringue.

Preheat the oven to 150°C / 300°F.

Add the icing sugar, the egg white, a pinch of salt and 1 drop lemon juice.

Whisk it slowly for 15 minutes. While doing so, observe the ground for dry sugar that is stuck and not part of the moving mass. Scratch it off with a spoon or knock the kitchen container knightly on the table. After 15 minutes use the full speed of your mixer until the mass becomes stiff, not shiny and you can pull peaks that don't collapse.

Fill you pastry bag and use the loaf pan upside down as a mold for the meringue waves around the ship. When you press the pastry bag, push it a bit into the first round and then pull it to the side for a wave formation. In the front make a bigger bed for the mouth of the Flying Dutchman to lean on.

Bake it 15 minutes until the tops get slightly brown. Reduce the heat and leave the door a bit open or place a wooden spoon between the door to let the dampness escape while you let them dry for 4-5 hours.

The albedo and skin between the pulps of a lemon slice look like a ship's wheel when dried out. Add it to the drying meringue in the oven. If you have self-made spaghetti, pick one with a slight curve from the drying rack and stick it right into the middle of the dried lemon slice.

Take the top of the cake you had cut off and now cut both ends to get wedges that you can use as jaws for the mouth. With almond slivers we not only shape the teeth but also connectors between the jaws and the cake. It still needs the bed we made of meringue to stay in place.

The rest of the formerly top can be used to create a quarterdeck. Stick the ship's wheel in it.

With a clean brush and some sugared water or sugar icing you paint a Jolly Roger on the ricepaper. Then you sift cocoa on it and blow the excess away.

To create Davy Jones prepare edible clay. Shape a head and use the handle of a spoon for the eyes. Add tentacles by rolling the dough very thin. Some left over couverture in a cookie cutter will be the head. Bake the edible clay at 150°C (300°F) for 12 minutes and store the cookie cutter in a freezer to harden.

Ingredients:

• 4 gummy bears
• 1 teaspoon icing sugar
• 1 teaspoon water

Instruction:

1 minute in a microwave at 180 watt. Stir and apply on Davy Jones. You can draw sugary cobwebs between the tentacles to create a slimy appearance. If the icing becomes too sticky to apply just add a half spoon of water and put it into the micorwave agian. Add a little key from a jewel case.

Put it all together, add some other candy, use yellow chocolate beans as a treasure of gold, place a pumpkin next to it and fill a tiny bottle with cocoa as the "jar of dirt". Some spherical chocolate sweets are meant to be gunfire.

Happy Halloween!