Sand Castle Cake

If you don't know about the Disney Family Fun website, you are truly missing out! They have so many fun ideas for crafts, activities, and, my favorite, decorating cakes. For my husband's birthday he chose this sandcastle cake. I'm going to share with you the original recipe and instructions. You'll notice mine is a little different; this is because I was serving over twenty people, so I needed to make the cake bigger. Otherwise, it's essentially the same idea.

Ingredients:
8-inch round yellow cake
9-inch square yellow cake
2 (12-ounce) cans vanilla whipped frosting
Vanilla Wafers, 12-ounce box
4 jumbo ice cream cups
2 small ice cream cups
6 sugar cones
Graham cracker sticks (or stick like cookies), cut in half

What to do:
1. Use a long serrated knife to trim the top of the round cake flat, if needed. Cut a 5 1/2-inch and a 3 1/2-inch circle from the square cake, then stack all three pieces, spreading vanilla frosting between the layers. Frost the stack.
2. Use a rolling pin or food processor to crumble the wafers. With your hands, press the crumbs into the frosting, completely coating the cake. Spread frosting on the bottom of each ice-cream cup, then set them around the cake. With a serrated knife, carefully trim 1 1/2 inches from the top of 2 of the sugar cones. Set all 6 cones into the cups to complete the turrets, spreading a bit of frosting around the rims to hold them if needed.
3. Press 2 graham cracker-stick doors into the middle cake layer and rim the rest of the cake with graham cracker-stick halves. Sprinkle the remaining crumbs around the base and add a scattering of candy seashells and rocks. Serves 12.

(Click on the sand castle cake link above to see the example picture from the website.)