Who lives in a pineapple under the sea?

Spongebob Squarepants!  But his pants aren't actually square... they're more of a trapezoid shape really...

Anyway, a couple of weeks ago a co-worker of C's asked me to make a cake for her little boy's birthday party.  No problem, right?  Carrot cake seems a little odd for a 3 year old's party, but what the heck.  You want it to be Spongebob themed... d'oh.  This might take some doing...

Now I think I've gotten pretty decent at making regular cakes.  I've made some pretty amazing ones if I do say so myself.  I've made a white chocolate raspberry cake:

 

A peanut butter cake with chocolate mousse (Hungry had to guard this one)

 

A carrot cake with cream cheese icing

 

And a Red Velvet cake with French buttercream icing (so amazing and SO much tastier than the crud you get from the store!)

 

So what's the big deal, you ask?  Well first I've never made a cake for money.  Sure, I've made cakes for people, but this is the first time I've had a "real" customer.  So of course I want to make sure that she's happy.  I don't want the first thing I sell to someone to be utter crapola.  Second, I've never made a character cake in my life.  Needless to say I've been a little more than anxious about making this cake.  I don't want it to look like her 3 year old took his crayolas to the cake board and drew mommy a pretty picture of a yellow blob that may or may not be Spongebob.  In order to calm the inner panic and squash the mental "there's no way you can make this actually look like Spongebob" thoughts, I decided to have a trial run, and I think it went pretty well!  Here's what my first go at it looks like:

 

Overall I'm pretty happy with it!  I think I'm going to drop the saluting and just draw some hands with icing on the cake board.  The only other things that I might change are making the blue of the eyes a little lighter and not cutting the angle of the pants quite so sharp so his legs have a bit more room.  Obviously I need to be more careful with what gets on the board itself, but I plan on covering it with foil, so it should be much easier to keep clean.

I now feel much more confident in my ability to make this cake.  While it's not the most cost effective way to make money, I'd rather spend a little extra to practice and put out a great cake the first time around than put out a crap-tastic cake and have my fragile little reputation ruined before it has a chance to grow!

P.S. Apparently Spongebob goes around singing "lalalalalalalalala" because C has been doing this all day... just thought I'd share the "fun." ;-)  Toodles!