95th Beach Birthday

Aside from beach time, this Memorial Day weekend marked the 95th birthday of my grandfather. Friends and family gathered from all parts of the country: Hartford, CT, Washington DC, Cleveland Ohio, Boston, NYC & more to help celebrate the big day in New London, CT. It should come as no surprise to you that I offered to bake the cake for the occasion.


I've been coming to New London, CT for my entire life. Every summer for a week (and more frequently now that I live in Boston) I have come here, to the beach, to enjoy the warm weather & to visit with my family. Memories of sand castles, sea glass, beach umbrellas and 60's style yellow bed comforters fill my head when I think of this town (the cottage that my family owns is cute, but it needs a little decoration updating).

Using most of these memories, I began to craft the idea for a beach style birthday cake. Before I get into the details of the cake creation, I have to say a HUGE thank you to the best cake creation assistant in the word: Miss Sophie Hannah Ludgin. Sophie is my 6 1/2 year old cousin from Washington DC. She is very smart & very creative, so she was a HUGE help to me when deciding exactly how to decorate the cake. Sophie mixed the icing & created the "sand" for the cake, as well as decided how to adorn the cake with the gold & silver dragee balls. Here is a picture of us with our cake:


I've seen many examples (online & on one of my favorite TV shows - Ace of Cakes) of beach themed cakes using both brown sugar and graham cracker crumbs to simulate sand. I went with the graham cracker version.

Tip 1: if you use chocolate frosting & the graham cracker crumbs, you achieve a s'mores - like tasting treat - really good! Make sure the crumbs are mostly finely crushed so that they spread easily.

Tip 2: Another tip to get the surface area looking "beach like": mix vanilla & chocolate icing together to achieve a camel-colored frosting. It makes your job a lot easier than trying to cover the entire surface area with graham cracker crumbs (a little hard to get the crumbs to complete cover the cake surface area).


Tip 3: Make sure each layer of your cake is leveled before you stack the next level. If not, you might have cake tipping problems. I ran into this - as a fix, I stuck a folded paper plate under the side of the serving platter in order to ensure the cake sat level until time for serving.

Warning: Do NOT mix the graham cracker crumbs into the frosting. They soak up the moisture from the frosting & make it very hard to spread. It might work if you use the crumbs sparingly & have very sticky frosting, but I suggest first spreading the frosting & then, using your hands, cover the frosting surface area with the crumbs.

Using gum paste & royal icing, I crafted beach umbrellas & a shovel and pale for decorations. Dragees served as fancy adornments. I also made chocolate shells using old Madeleine cookie pans (this worked REALLY well).


**Note about the umbrella with "Budweiser" on it - inside family joke. My grandfather won a beach umbrella that looked like that about five years ago & insisted on our using it instead of buying a new one - slightly embarrassing with all of the little kids & older residents on the beach...

The cake came out as a huge success - everyone loved it & it tasted great. Highly recommend a similar style for a beach themed party!