Luau Cake

Last week my second oldest niece turned 16. Holy cow! That means I'm.....getting old. For her birthday, she requested that she not be a part of the party planning, so her parents decided to throw her a surprise luau party and I offered to make the cake (and to be the distraction! Pretending to be lost and/or crazy for 40 minutes was not easy lol)
Remember two years ago when I said that I would never make another two tiered cake? I lied. I wanted this to be really big and really special. I was slightly less stressed about this one than I was about the last because it was for family and it wasn't my first two tiered cake. That's not saying I wasn't stressed, because boy howdy I was. I become a freak when I'm baking for other people. No one can be in my kitchen. Not even my husband who lives here too. Poor guy.
Anyways, it took approximately 12 hours, but I really loved how the cake turned out. I'd hoped for better things with the palm tree topper, but oh well, it was still cute! Everything, including the shell candies on the bottom I made from scratch.The leaves of the small palms were made from Royal icing, and the "sand" is just brown sugar.
The bottom layer was dark chocolate cake with chocolate ganache and chocolate buttercream, and the top was pineapple with pineapple filling and pineapple buttercream. Both cakes were super rich and turned out pretty darn tasty if I do say so myself! I only wish I'd taken better pictures!