I thought someone out there would enjoy watching this Gummy Bear Pool Party Cake being made. I actually made this same cake last year. My daughter and her birthday-mate/BFF asked for it after looking at pictures of last year's cake, but I was secretly hoping I could mix it up a little. I decided I would make a Gummy Bear Ocean Beachfront Party Cake and surprise them. It was going to have a sailboat with gummy bears in it, and gummy bears on beach chairs and gummy sharks and umbrellas. There were going to be waves and the sail was going to announce the birthday girls' names and birth date.
I made the cakes in advance and I will admit that while I detest most bakery and store-bought frostings, I have made plenty of made-from-scratch cakes and in my opinion, the box cake mixes from the stores are just as good if not better than home cake mixes. Not true for frosting, but very true for cake mixes. For this party, I decided to make two boxes of cake mix, to be sure I have enough cake. So I made two 9x12 pans of chocolate cake, then sliced them both in half (horizontally) and frosted each layer, so that when they were put back together, the order went like this: cake, frosting, cake, frosting, cake, frosting, cake.
The next thing I'm going to make is sand for the beach. I decided at the store that these vanilla sandwich cookies look about the color of sand. So I scraped out all the middles and ground them in the food processor.
Moving on to the frosting. I made a big batch of it so I'm sure to have enough. It's a stiff frosting so it will hold up well for decorating or piping.
Here's an important tip: Separate out some frosting for the crumb coat in a different bowl and keep the knife out of the "master" bowl of frosting. Otherwise crumbs will get in the main bowl and then it will basically be a disaster. Don't double-dip the knife. If more frosting is needed for the crumb coat, use a spoon to get it out of the master bowl. Once the crumb coat is done, get rid of the bowl and spoon that was used to do it. Use a new knife for the next layer of frosting.
While the frosting is still "wet", it is important to apply anything that needs to stick to it. I decided to use some different candy to decorate the sides, in this case, Spree, Gummy Bears, and Dots.
Next it was time to lay down the pool.
The gummy bears are floating in peach gummy rings, and the pool mats/surfboards are made out of Airheads and some kind of sour gummy tape. I used a clean scissors to cut whatever shapes I needed. The diving board is a wafer cookie held up by tooth picks. Gummy bears were "glued" in place using a tiny dab of frosting.
Amazingly, this cake held up well and not a single piece of candy fell off the cake during the 30 minute highway commute. I was so relieved. Still, it is best to come prepared and bring extra frosting, a knife, and toothpicks to take care of anything that might happen on the way. Here is the cake before the candles were blown out.