Greek Party, Part 3: Costumes and Cake

COSTUMES

Using a headband and some sparkly leaves, it is easy to make a laurel wreath for a costume. (The blue and green sparkly sticks are seaweed for Poseidon.)

I used clear tape to wrap the leaf stems around the headband.  If this was something I wanted to keep for a long time, I'd use floral tape, but I was aiming to just use this wreath for the party and perhaps reuse the materials afterwards.

Poseidon's crown had the wavy blue and green sticks (which I removed from the stems) to give the illusion of ocean waves.  With a green toga on top of his light colored shirt, it looked great.  (There are lots of web sites describing how to don a toga, so I won't post that here.)

For his trident, I cut sparkly foam (it came with a sticky backing) for the front and back, and stuck the front and back together on a wooden dowel.  Couldn't be easier!

I added more of the wavy sticks to the base, once again to give the idea of water.

TRIDENT CAKE

My son wanted a spice cake trident for the party.  Normally, we like to bake from scratch, but I have found that to shape a cake, using a box mix is best.  Cakes from a mix tend to be quite sturdy.

I baked this cake in a 9 X 13 glass dish.  The top part of the trident was cut from the rectangle; from the discarded pieces, I shaped the bottom 'stick' of the trident.

Using a serrated knife, I sliced off the edges and top to make the two parts match.

For the icing, once again I find that store-bought icing is sturdier than home-made.  First, I added a crumb layer.  Then I added a top layer of icing and decorated the cake with colored sugar, green for the top and brown for the stick.  I sprinkled blue all over the cake and the tray.  To add details, I used sparkly gold gel.