Get luau guests sugared up with a Hawaiian-theme cake.
When party guests need a refresher from shaking their hips to the hula or would like a sweet treat to go with their Mai Tais, bring out the party cake. Your Hawaiian party dessert doesn't have to be a standard sheet cake from the grocery store. With a few tropical perks, you can let your guests have their Hawaiian cake and eat it, too. Does this Spark an idea?
Edible Lei
As you welcomed guests to your Hawaiian party, you may have put a traditional flowery lei around their necks. Keep with the lei theme by designing one on top of your cake. Instead of the typical icing rosette flowers, use real flowers on your cake, selecting edible flora that will give your guests a truly different way to think of cake toppings. Flowers that may be growing in your garden right now are considered edible (always wash and dry flowers first, and don't pick ones that have been sprayed or treated with pesticides), including anise hyssop (tastes like licorice), begonia (tastes like citrus), chrysanthemum (tastes bitter and strong), hibiscus (tastes like cranberry) and violet (tastes sweet). Try to pick the entire head of the flower with the petals intact, then arrange the flowers in a necklace pattern on top of the cake after baking and frosting has been completed.
Tasty Tiki
Top just about any shape or size cake with a staring, outrageous-looking creature called a tiki. Tikis have ancestry dating back to carvings found 25,000 years ago. The tiki symbol, a block-headed, bulging-eyed totem, hovers around Hawaii as one of its national symbols. Tikis may have wide, grinning faces or more ominous frowns. Their basic block shape make them ideal to sit atop your next Hawaiian party cake. Bake a rectangle cake and frost it all around with chocolate icing. Using a butter knife, carve out the tiki's eyes, nose and a frown or smile (save the extra carved cake on a plate to eat later). Smooth the icing back over any cake bits that show through the holes, and let your guests compete to be the first to tempt the tiki.
Crazy Coconuts
While many professional hula dancers wouldn't get too far with their moves when wearing just the stereotypical coconut bra, the Hawaiian-themed attire can serve as an excellent cake topper. Make your cake as you would normally and frost it with vanilla or a light colored icing. Cut a coconut in two equal halves and hollow out the insides (save the milk to drink or use for another recipe). Place the coconuts cut-side down on the cake a few inches apart. Cut a candy necklace apart and individually place the candies into the cake to look like the straps of a coconut bra (using an actual string could cause a choking danger when the cake is cut). Another option is to use long strands of black licorice to form the bra straps.
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