Build a Sandcastle Cake!

(Please note: these are general directions. Sizes and shapes are up to you!
Also, it took us two afternoons to make this cake: one to bake and build it, the second to decorate it.)

For this cake, you will need:
* commercial cake mix, and ingredients listed on box (We used two boxes of mix for this castle, and would recommend against using a "super moist" mix, as soft cake is harder to build with and decorate)
* enough vanilla frosting to cover cake
* brown sugar for "sand" decoration
* graham crackers, licorice whips, etc. for decorations
* candy seashells, candy "stones" or candy sand dollars, available in some candy stores

Instructions:
1) Purchase a commercial cake mix, and bake cake in a rectangular or square pans. Plan how you'll build your castle before you bake it to make sure you have the right shapes and sizes of pans. Round towers can be baked in muffin tins.
2) Assemble cake using vanilla frosting between layers and on all outer surfaces(frosting can be colored beige with drops of red, blue and yellow food coloring)

4) Decorate your cake! Sprinkle brown sugar "sand" over the top of the cake by sifting light brown sugar onto the cake (it may need to be pushed through a sieve with the back of a spoon). Add other details to make your castle look even better.

Fig. 1: How our cake went together

Other suggestions to make your cake more "beachy":
* Almonds, oyster crackers, Raisinettes, non pareils for stones
* Cut raggedy shapes from green fruit leather and mount on toothpicks or wooden barbecue skewers for seaweed flags. Green fruit leather can also be cut up to make seaweed to scatter around the base of the cake
* wax bottles, Bottle Caps candy for beach trash
* A ring of gummy fish around the bottom
* Make a drawbridge out of a cinnamon graham cracker (sugar side up!), and chains out of licorice whips or twists.
* Push a gingersnap into the frosting as a half-buried sand dollar.
* Make a base out of heavy, white cardboard or "Foamcore", and make a moat out of construction paper...