Flip-Flop Cake

This is a flip-flop cake I made for my niece's birthday. I baked a 9x13 chocolate cake for this one. I made a pattern of a flip flop and cut the cake out from the pattern. The biggest problem I had was with the crumbs mixing into the icing. The cake kept falling apart at the edges and sticking to the icing. So I did a crumb coat which seals in the crumbs and then I added all the colored icing on top of the crumb coat. The sides have candy on them. The flowers are cut out from fondant that I cut out a day or so before and let dry in a teacup to make them curl a little. The straps are licorice Pull-and-Peels. Then I stuck a gummy lobster and shark on the sides. Super cute and super fun to make!