A Man is Shipwrecked on a Tropical Island . . .

It's been over a year since I've had a desktop computer, but I finally got my new one set up and in working order (sort of.  We've had some long talks with tech support).

And that means - I can get back to posting cakes.  Because although I haven't posted in awhile, that doesn't mean I wasn't caking!

This next cake was done for a beach themed wedding shower back in April of 2015!  I don't remember why that was the theme, but I was asked to make a sort of tropical island cake.  And you can't have a tropical island without palm trees.

I knew that I needed to make the trees ahead of time because if the fondant was still soft, there is no way the trees would hold up.  I used brown fondant wrapped around lollipop sticks and I cut out some green leaves for the top.  I glued them on with gum glue and stuck them in a glass with some wrap to hold them up while they dried.

You can see the lollipop stick at the bottom and the ceran wrap is holding up the leaves.

I made a chocolate cake with my normal chocolate fudge and chocolate chip filling.  I used blue icing to make the wall for the filling since I knew I would be using blue on the cake for the water.

Once the cake cooled, I frosted it and covered it with fondant.  I added "waves" as a border using the blue fondant.  I also added a fondant piece on top for the sand.

Next I added the trees (and they stayed upright!).  But that brown fondant sand really doesn't sell the idea of sand.

So I added brown sugar to get that nice granular effect.

Next I used a shell mold and some Wilton candy melts to make candy shells.  These would be added to the border later.

Then I made some fondant items that one might associate with a beachy paradise:

Life preservers, shells, and flip flops.

 I also made a beach ball using gum glue and petal dust.

 Looking pretty good!

View from the rescue plane.

 And finally, I added the candy shells to the border.

A tropical island paradise!