How to Make a Boat Cake

William D Evans

This 3D cake adventure involves modeling chocolate, piped chocolate, malt balls, buttercream frosting, wood dowel infrastructure, carved cake construction, and Pepperidge Farm Pirouette Rolled Wafers. This boat wedding cake was designed for a couple that met at the 2009 San Diego Singles Conference on a boat called the William D. Evans. My challenge was to simplify the boat’s detail down to a manageable level. For more on this topic follow this link to read my tutorial on how to make a ship cake, to see my rendering an aircraft carrier.

How to Build the Boat Cake Parts

This boat cake fed over 100 people and consisted of four components with two large base tiers that blended together as one.

Above is the base tier and below is the second tier. Each one was frosted with smooth buttercream and wrapped with modeling chocolate.

I used wooden dowels as infrastructure. For more on that topic, follow this link to read my tutorial on how to use wooden dowels in stacked cakes.

I also wrapped all the exposed sides of this cake in ivory modeling chocolate.

Marbled Modeling Chocolate Windows

To make the windows on this boat cake, dark brown, light brown, and white modeling chocolate were marbled together. The marbled modeling chocolate was then rolled into 1/8” thick sheets. Using the two square cutters, I cut windows for the sides of the boat. I used smaller square cutters to cut out the windows’ centers.

I use the recipes and techniques in this book
Cake Decorating with Modeling Chocolate

Modeling Chocolate Banisters

I kneaded together the scraps of modeling chocolate left over from the windows and rolled them into a bunch of long ropes, which served as banisters for the three levels of the boat.

Molded Chocolate Columns

The columns were made of dark and white chocolate that was melted marbled, then poured into pencil molds.

Once the chocolate pencils were hard, I popped them out of the molds and trimmed off the pointy tips. Then I fit them like columns on the front, sides, and back of the cake, trimming them to the size of the spaces left by the banisters.

White Chocolate Piped Banister Rungs

Then I added rungs to the banisters by piping vertical lines of melted white chocolate all the way around. For more info on this method, follow this link to watch my video for piping with parchment paper cones.

Modeling Chocolate Flags

I added red white and blue modeling chocolate flags to the banisters on the cake and secured them with melted white chocolate. I also painted the inside of the windows with a little cocoa powder accent and piped a dripping white chocolate effect around the base of each level.

Read the Modeling Chocolate Flags Tutorial

Decorating the Top Elements

The top tiers of the cake were decorated in the same manner but use mostly melted dark chocolate for the dripping and piping effects.

Piping the Chocolate Inscription

The inscription was achieved using scraps of rolled modeling chocolate decorated with white chocolate piped writing that was allowed to set then applied to the back of the cake.

To learn more about this chocolate cake font, follow this link to read my tutorial on cake writing.

Assembling the Cake Parts

At this point, the only steps remaining to complete to the cake were to add the top elements and make a few final touches. I used Pepperidge Farm Pirouette Rolled Wafers in a few places to represent the tall light structures and mastheads.

I also added malt balls to make the boat look more delectable.

Lastly, around the base of the cake, I created an edible water effect on the platter using white and blue smooth buttercream frosting swirled together with an offset spatula.