A Day at the Beach Cake

Festive beach cake decorated with blue frosting and graham cracker sand with teddy graham bears on the beach under beach umbrellas

5 from 1 vote

A fun party cake with a beach theme made with a store made cake mix. Use a homemade vanilla frosting tinted blue for the ocean. Let your imagination run with creative beach decor. Use crushed graham crackers as sand.

Course Baking, Dessert

Cuisine American

Keyword beach cake, party cake, summer cake, Summer Dessert Week

Prep Time 5

Cook Time 23

Decorating the Cake 20

Total Time 48

Servings servings

Calories 418kcal

Author Eileen Kelly

Ingredients

15.0 ounce Vanilla cake mix plus ingredients required to make cake Note 1
3-4 drops blue food coloring, optional use if you want to color cake blue

Vanilla Frosting

5 ½ cups confectioners sugar
⅔ cup salted butter, cut into cubes and softened
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
3 Tablespoons milk
5-6 drops blue food coloring

Beach Cake Decorations

9 graham crackers, ground into crumbs beach sand
5-6 graham cracker teddy bears people on the beach
1 Tablespoon Sweets & Treats Boutique blue and green sprinkles
2-3 life saver beach floats
2-4 fruit rolls beach towels
4-5 Swedish fish ocean fish
2 tiki drink umbrella beach umbrellas

Instructions

Bake the cake

Follow directions on cake mix. If you want the cake to be blue, add food coloring to batter before baking the cake.
Let cake cool completely before decorating.

How to make Vanilla Frosting

In a large bowl add confectioners sugar and butter.
Use a hand mixer on low setting to beat sugar/butter. Mixture will begin to blend.
Add in the vanilla extract and milk.
Continue to mix until frosting is smooth.
Set aside about 2 Tablespoons of the white frosting to be used to add white caps to the ocean frosting.
To the large bowl of frosting, add blue food coloring and mix well.

How to Decorate a Beach Cake

Frost the cake with the blue frosting.
Add some of the white to the ocean side of cake to add white caps to the "wave"
Add the ground graham cracker to one side of the cake. About ⅓ of the cake should be the beach.
Add Swedish fish into the ocean.
Use life savers and some of the white frosting to adhere the teddy bears onto the life savers. Place them in by the edge of the sand. The bears will appear to be on beach floats.
Set the tiki umbrellas up.
Put the fruit rolls under the umbrellas as the "beach blankets"
Lay the teddy graham bears on the fruit rolls
Spread the sprinkles on the the ocean of the cake.

Notes

Note 1: You will need the ingredients required to make the vanilla cake

Note 2: Use your creativity when decorating the cake or copy my setup. Have fun and enjoy.

Note 3: Calculations for nutrition include the vanilla icing. The calculations are not including the decorations.

Any nutritional data I provide is an approximation and actual dietary information can vary based on ingredients and proportion sizes.

Nutrition