Perfect for parties, and...little kids. And me.

Step 1: The Cake

You have several options for the actual cake. You can buy a blank sheet cake, make it from a mix, or do it the good old-fashioned honest way and make it from stratch like I did.

To make it from stratch, you need:

2 1/3 cups self-rising or all purpose flour (if you do not have this or are not sure if it is self rising, use a teaspoon of baking soda)

1 1/2 cups sugar

1/2 cup shortening (I was out, so I used vegetable oil. You could also use butter.)

1 cup milk (I was out of this as well. So I used a half cup of evaporated milk and a half cup of water.)

1 teaspoon vanilla flavoring ( I used vanilla extract. You should read recipes more carefully than I do.)

2 eggs

Mix the flour, sugar and shortening well. Add milk and flavoring gradually, scraping bowl frequently. Add eggs. Beat for 2 more minutes.

Take baking pan and grease with butter, oil or pam. Flour lightly. Pour batter into 9" pans. Bake for approx. 35 minutes at 350 degrees.

Step 2: Frosting

Here, too, you can either cheat and buy ready-made frosting (aka "the smart way") in the colors you want, or you can make the frosting and color it yourself.

Method 1

You'll need:

4 cups sifted confectioners sugar (approximately 1 lb.)

1 cup solid vegetable shortening ( I used butter)

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 Tablespoon milk or water

Food coloring

Sift confectioners sugar into a large mixing bowl, set aside. Cream shortening, vanilla and milk or water. Gradually add sugar and mix on medium speed until all ingredients have been thoroughly mixed together. Blend an additional minute or so, until creamy.

Don't mix in the food coloring unless you're ready to frost right now.

Step 3: Decorating

Wow, yet another place where you have two options. Here they are to either decorate this cake yourself, or bribe/force/coerce somebody to do it for you.

In case you don't know what Spongebob looks like, here is a picture to print out and refer to.

Step 4: Skip This If You Bought Your Frosting

You need several colors for Spongebob.
Here's how to make them:

Yellow:
Mix about a cup, give or take, of your white frosting you made earlier. Mix with one or two drops of yellow food coloring. Mix until satisfied with color. Set aside.

Brown:
Mix about a cup of white frosting with red and green food dye. It's tough to get the correct proportions. Just do trial and error till you get it. Set aside.

Green:
Mix about half a cup of white frosting with yellow frosting. Add just a little green. Mix well. Set aside.

Pink, red, and maroon: Mix about a cup of white frosting with just a little red coloring. Set aside for now. We'll do the pink parts first, then red, then maroon, adding color as needed. No need to make three seperate cups of frosting.

Black:
This one's tough. I mixed some leftover brown with some blue to get black.

Step 5: Frost!

Frost upper 1/2 to 1/3 of cake with yellow.

Add a strip of white one or two inches wide directly below.

Frost the remaining cake with brown frosting.

Step 6: Frosting...

Make two triangles without tops on the white. This makes his collar.

Make two targets for his eyes. Give him three eyelashes per eye.

Step 7: More Frosting...

Make his mouth. It's kind of a U with a top. Be sure to put two lines at the corners. Give him two buck teeth and under those make two little bumps or hills. They make his tongue.

Step 8: Endless Frosting

Make his nose (which is rather long)between his eyes and above his mouth. It's an uneven loop.

Give hime four little rectangles on the brown area (his pants). Mine look more like squares. These are his belt loops.

Step 9: Frosting...

Take the pink frosting and make two loops above the corners of his mouth. Between those and the black lines, make an equilateral triangle out of pink dots.

Give hime a pink squiggle for a chin.

Fill in the two bumps under his teeth. Now it looks like his tongue.

Step 10: I Love to Frost

Take your frosting and add more red to it. Make his tie as shown. It's ok if it overlaps the belt loops a bit.

Add more red food dye. Fill in the rest of his mouth with the nice dark red you get.

Step 11: Boy, I'm Sick of Frosting

Take the green frosting and make circles on him. These are his holes(He's a sponge..you know, SPONGEbob).

Take the white frosting and fill in the outer rim of his eyes. Now would also be a good time to fill in his teeth whith white.

Fill in the inner rim of his eyes with the blue.

Frosting tips:

Take a glass of water and wet your finger in it. Then run your finger on any uneven spots to get a nice, flat, smooth frosting job.

Use a butter knife to smooth over big areas first.