Sand Castle Birthday Cake

My little girly LOVES the beach!!  She decided this year she wanted a beach birthday when she turned five.

We went on Pinterest and I found some inspiration over on Living Well, Spending Less.

It was actually pretty fun to make!  I used a chocolate cake mix and poured it in to different size round oven-safe bowls, including a pie plate for the bottom one, a medium size bowl and three cupcakes.  The "towers" are sugar ice cream cones.  The whole surface of the cake is covered in frosting and then the sand is sprinkled on top.

The hardest part was getting the "sand" to stick on the sides.  I had to push it up with a fork and pat it into the frosting.

So what is the "sand"?

I used crushed honey graham crackers and threw in one chocolate graham cracker so it looked more natural colored.  For the cones, I frosted them, and rolled them in the crumbs.

The starfish.  Oh what a fun little craft to do with the birthday girl.  Have you heard of salt dough?  Yeah, probably.  My mom said she did salt dough as a kid.  Well sheesh.  Where have I been?  Painting furniture, and walls, and signs, and little girl's toenails I guess.  Not making salt dough ornaments, for sure.

Anyways, there is a plethora of ideas for salt dough out there on the world wide spiderweb.

Here's the recipe I used:

Salt Dough

2 cups flour

1 cup salt

3/4 to 1 cup water

Check out the link for directions on the starfish HERE at Desperate Craft Wives.

As innocent and sweet as that little birthday girl looks, she sure thinks it would be the best idea ever to put some frosting on one of those salt dough starfish and tell Grandma it's a cookie...

OH.  I almost forgot to warn you.  YES, WARN YOU.

This cake was nice eye candy... but in the taste department, well.... the "sand" urgh, made it feel rather dry in the mouth.  Now I only like cake if it's good and moist, or it just ain't worth the calories.  My best advice would be to put the frosting on THICK, and then some more, so that you don't have a mouth full of dry graham cracker crumbs.  I'm sorry to all the party guests for a mouth full of sand.  

Yeah.  Lots more frosting, and then I think you should be good to go eat.  :)