Cake Decorating Ideas for Scouts

Scouting is a popular activity for young boys and girls alike, and scout troops offer many opportunities for learning practical everyday life skills and outdoor survival skills. If your scout troop is having a party or hosting a special event, a cake decorated with a scouting theme will likely be a big hit--and the actual baking and decorating process can be a great activity for the scout troop members.
Camp Themes
Camping themes are excellent for a scout cake and there are a variety of ways to decorate a cake with this theme, depending upon your skill level. For an easy cake, take a sheet cake frosted with plain white frosting and create a campground on it, brushing on green and blue food coloring to form a river with grassy banks. Make a miniature pup tent, trees, animals and even little campers out of rolled fondant. More skilled decorators can make a tent-shaped cake set on a piece of covered cardboard and create the scene with rolled fondant around the tent cake, using cupcakes for boulders.

Make a giant s'more out of cake by layering two sheet cakes with the smaller one on top, then frost them to look like a graham cracker and chocolate bar. Place a three-tiered round cake on top, frosted with plain white icing (or marshmallow cream) for the marshmallow. Or you can create a campfire cake by first making a large papier-mache cone--like you would for a volcano--and covering the cone with parchment paper painted brown with food coloring. Then make paper flames stick out of the top of the cone. Make cake logs using a jelly roll pan, and cover them with rolled fondant decorated to look like bark. Stack the cake logs against and around the cone to resemble a campfire.
Badges and Patches
An excellent cake decorating idea for a scout badge or patch ceremony is to make the cake to resemble an actual badge or patch. Or you could bake small individual cakes and personalize them for each scout to look like the badge or patch that he or she is receiving. This also works for a graduation party or a bridging ceremony (for instance, Brownies to Juniors or Tiger Cubs to Cub Scouts). You can decorate the cake to resemble the new scout badge that identifies the scout as having moved up a grade.
Special Events
Another consideration is decorating a cake to match a special event. If you are celebrating a successful cookie-selling season, make your cake a giant cookie--or have a huge cookie. For an after-derby party for Cub Scouts, design a cake that looks like a derby racer. For a Cub Scout Troop's blue and gold banquet, consider ordering a two-tier plain white wedding cake from your local bakery and decorating it with blue and gold decorations, such as fondant ribbons and gum paste flowers or stars. The classic Girl Scout logo can be iced onto a cake or cut out of cake as an excellent accompaniment to any special event.