Shark Attack and Ocean Themed Cupcakes

For my friend Shelly's birthday this year, I was going to make her a cake that had a crew theme to it, but being unable to find the right supplies at the store and also waiting until the afternoon of ruined my chances of doing that.  Instead, I chose an ocean theme and went with the "Shark Attack" cupcake from my Hello Cupcake book (which will give you more detailed instructions), since Shelly is a beast in the water just like a great white.

I made blue frosting to cover the cupcakes for the water effect.

I also made some grey frosting for the shark.

I gave the cupcakes texture to make the ocean look choppy.

Next I made the shark out of a Twinkie and put him on top of a cupcake.

I made some life preserves out of powdered doughnuts and fruit roll ups.

On some of the other cupcakes, I added some Swedish fish.  The rest I left blank except for the three I used to write out Happy Birthday Shelly.

Here's a close up of the writing.

Kyle's Christmas Train Cake

For my brother's birthday, I made him a train cake.  He likes trains and was really into them when he was younger and even had a train themed bed room.  He is much older now, but I thought a train would still be a good idea for a cake.

Choo Choo!

I decided to make a chocolate cake with peppermint icing filling.  I started by smashing up some candy canes.

I mixed the candy canes into the frosting.  Just a note, make sure the cake is going to get eaten right away if you want to put candy canes in it and still have the crunch.  they get gooey after a while.

Next I made the cake and cut it into sections for the train.

I layered the cake to make the front of the train and had some extra left over, so I decided to make a coal car to go with it.  I used the peppermint frosting to fill the cake

Next I started frosting the cake with non peppermint frosting.  I also decided to add a cow catcher to the train, which was a nice decorative thought, but really crumbly and a pain to frost.

After I finished frosting it, I added some decorations including a candle for a smoke stack, chocolate wheels and some "santa's coal bubble gum" for the coal in the coal car.

I added some candy canes to give it some extra design and used the crook part of the cane as a way to show how the cars could be connected together.  The cake turned out like this once the smoke stack was lit.  Also, that bottle is root beer.

Here's a look at the inside and you can see how coal like the bubble gum was.