"Cake Wrecks" or "What Happens When I Help My Cub Scouts"

My lovely sons are cub scouts and they like it.  They learn stuff and feel good about accomplishing stuff and get patches and stuff.  And stuff.  But this time of year, ready or not, I have to grit my teeth, roll up my sleeves, and be a mom to two cub scouts.  

I don't like February's Blue and Gold Banquet.  Or March's Pinewood Derby.  They are labor-intensive. Our ward has a cake baking/decorating activity to go along with Blue and Gold Banquets. I thought I was being smart this year when I picked a dozen cake options online and had each boy pick what kind of cake they wanted to decorate.  JO picked well.  He made a paper template, and did a Ninja design with powdered sugar and red sugar granules "for the blood."  

                 JO's is the cake on the left on the blue tablecloth.

With two boys, I have double the opportunity to ruin a cake.  This year I almost ruined RO's.  Apparently I've watched too many episodes of Cake Boss.  I didn't realize how hard it would be to make a 3D pirate ship.  I also don't apply my basic knowledge of physics to every day life.  

RO baked two cakes and we froze them.  Then Tuesday morning I made three layers of awesomeness, carved into the exact shape of a pirate ship.  This was going to be good.  I was going to dirty ice the cake for RO (Cake Boss nod) so he could decorate with chocolate wafers for the railing, Pirouettes (like cereal straws) for cannons and the mast, Cocoa Krispies for cannonballs, a peanut butter cup for the steering wheel (all boat-savvy people call them steering wheels, right?) and coconut dyed blue for the ocean waves.  But the icing was too heavy.  After a can and a half of frosting RO's cake fell apart-- I shouldn't have tapered the sides.  Stress!  

If only he'd wanted to decorate the Titanic, then we would've been in business.  The wrecked cake was on the table when the kids got home, and JO wasn't impressed with RO's cake.  He thought it was horrible. RO said "Woah! What happened?"  Another cake was in the oven almost ready to go.  RO ended up making a cool cake, just on a smaller scale, using some of the collapsed cake, and adding some legos.  The cub master teased him about legos not being edible, but at that point I didn't care.  The end result was almost much, much worse!  

Notice the shark eating the pirate who just walked the plank?  A nice touch, I think.

So. . . 

Mom, can we please start working on our Pinewood Derby cars now?