Treasure Chest Cake

Happy Gasparilla, Friends!

We are SO excited to attend the parade today with our friends and family! Gasparilla is such a fun time for our fair city. Admittedly, jolly rogers are not my favorite accessory, but they sure are cute during Gasparilla! Our house is decorated with wreaths and beads and beautiful hand-decorated jolly roger ornaments and hand towels. It's fun to be festive. Today we'll don our pirate apparel and leave super early for the parade and its surrounding entertainment. We can't wait!

To get into the spirit, we made a fun pirate treasure chest cake last night. We began this tradition last year when we made our first treasure chest cake. I have learned that I am not necessarily a neat cook, so I'm sure you can make your cake look even better than ours. The fun part of this cake is filling it with candy treasures. I had fun going to the Dollar Tree to buy candy necklaces, ring pops, gold candies, gummy worms, gummy coke bottles, wax bottles, et cetera to go inside our treasure chest.

I found this fun recipe on familyfun.go.com!!!
Ingredients
1 baked 13- x 9- x 2-inch cake
6 cups chocolate frosting - One container of store bought frosting will work
Edible treasures, such as chocolate coins, Rolo candies, chocolate almond kisses or Necco Wafers
Red Fruit by the Foot
Mini jawbreakers
Candy jewels, such as candy necklaces and rock candy and ring pops!


Cut a section approximately 2-inches wide in the center of the cake. The two remaining 5 1/2- x 9- x 2-inch rectangular pieces will form the bottom and top of the chest.

Slice the 2-inch section on an angle to form two long triangular wedges. Place the wedges on the bottom half of the chest, about an inch apart. Both wedges should face the same direction (tall end toward the front of the cake) as they will support the top of the treasure chest and keep it propped open.

Then frost the bottom half of cake, including the wedges.

To add further support for the top of the chest, stand a few large gold coins under the lid.

With the "hinged" end (left side of photo) at the back, place the top of the chest on the bottom and frost.

Wrap the fruit leather straps around the chest and press mini jawbreaker "nails" into the frosting alongside the straps. Fill the chest and the surrounding area with edible treasures and jewels.

Gasparilla!

This weekend is the fun Gasparilla Children's Parade! Our town is very excited about this event. The Children's Parade is like the real Gasparilla, but it is served family-style, which Mama Henley prefers! There will be less hoochie mamas and more baby mamas seen on Bayshore on Saturday. Last year we moved to town less than 2 weeks before the festivities began. This year I can say things like, "We always go to so-and-so's house to watch the parade. She invites our whole church." Yeah, I'm all "we always" now and no one has to know that always means once, right?

To get into the fun, I made a treasure chest cake. I can't take the credit; I found the idea on the internet, but isn't it cute?! I love it and the children had fun decorating it.


My cute new friend, Kim, is an artist, as in a real-my-paintings-hang-in-really-nice-galleries-kind-of-artist. She helped me paint this cute pirate shirt for our son! She drew on a whiteboard and I painted on the t-shirt. She painted darling ones for our girls in the time it took me to paint one. Happy Gasparilla!! Surrender the booty!