I love the idea of a themed homemade dinner and a movie. A few weeks ago I asked my niece and nephews for movie ideas and they said, “How to Train Your Dragon 2”. We worked together to plan this meatless meal. Friday night we prepared the meal together (my niece was an amazing help) and then we went to see the movie. I thought that How to Train Your Dragon 2 was better than the first movie but I enjoyed both movies.

We came up with the idea for the Viking Ship Ice Cream Sundae ourselves. My 17 year old nephew made the templates for me. My 9 year old nephew drew on the details with an decorating gel pen. Directions for the cookie ship and templates are at the end of this post. Assembly of the ship was easier than I expected, especially on a slightly humid summer day. It was the highlight of this memorable meal.

My niece and nephews love fruit so we decided to carve a watermelon in the shape of a viking helmet. I based our helmet on this by the National Watermelon Promotion Board. We kept it much more simple but the kids enjoyed it. We ate watermelon with some blackberries.

We watched some clips from How to Train Your Dragon 2 so we incorporated the sheep with targets in our vegetable tray. Sheep – Nishiki rice shaped using a rice mold, heads are rice mixed with a little soy sauce. My niece painted the targets with gel food coloring. She had to be careful because the color did bleed a little. Also on the tray are carrots, sugar snap peas, cucumber, and mini sweet pepper and zucchini boats filled with ranch dip.

I made angel hair pasta, homemade cheese sauce (2 cup white sauce with shredded sharp cheddar cheese) and baked it until heated and slightly browned around the edges. We added red bell peppers as garnish. My 9 year old nephew knew they were supposed to be dragon fire but another nephew thought dragon claws which would also be appropriate.

We took Naan bread and my niece cut it into dragon shapes. She brushed the Naan with olive oil and added poppy seeds for Toothless. We baked them at 375 for about 10 minutes (until slightly browned). The other shapes we kept plain.

I thought that this filled dinner plate looked beautiful so I took a photo. It shows Toothless flying.

I stopped eating to take this photo of the meal in progress.

Here is the assembled Viking Ship before filling it with vanilla ice cream, hot fudge, and whipped cream.

Viking Ship Cookie Sundae

I used this sugar cookie recipe. My nephew made Viking Cookie Ship Sundae Templates on card-stock following my vision for the ships. I made the cookies a few days in advance. I placed the cookies between layers of waxed paper in a plastic container with lid and put it in the freezer. I made extra pieces and I did have some breakage before assembling. I defrosted the cookies about an hour before assembling.

I used this royal icing recipe to hold the pieces together. It was a slightly humid day and I don’t have central air-conditioning so I assembled the cookies only an hour before eating because I was concerned about them holding up. They were fine and much easier to assembly than I had guessed. I ended up assembling 4 ships and my husband had a shipwrecked sundae with a piece of the ship and the toppings. It was my backup plan if the ships did not hold together so I wanted to try it out.

This ships are large! I did not expect the kids to finish all of the cookie ship. Some of them did not but I was fine with it.

Details on the ship: My 9 year old nephew used Wilton’s Black Decorating Gel tube to draw on the details. He did it after I had assembled the ships.

Masts: I melted white candy melts, put it in a ziplock bag, snipped off the end with scissors then used the melted candy melts to draw sails onto aluminum foil. I put the wet sails in the freezer. When they were solid, I turned the sails upside down on aluminum foil, and used more melted white candy melts to attach the sail to pretzel rods (I put melted candy melt under, above and on both sides of the pretzel rod). Then I put them back into the freezer. I only did this shortly before eating. I took the masts out of the freezer right before serving dessert.

You can see the back of the mast in this photo. They worked out great!

There were 6 of us for dinner – 9 year old nephew, 12 year old nephew, 15 year old niece, 17 year old nephew, my  husband and myself. I hope that it is something they will remember fondly for years to come. Or even if some of them remember it as humoring their crazy Aunt with a passion for cute food – that is alright also.

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