I am a first grade teacher and my class and several other classes here have adopted soldiers over in Iraq. We would like to send them a cake covered in white fondant and allow all the children to write their names on it with edible writing pens. How could we get this cake to them? We thought that we could even make little 6 inch cakes for each one so they would have their own cake. Is this possible?

I work for the Military and know the boxes that are shipped over there do get banged up sometimes. I think its a cute idea but instead of cakes mabye use cookies covered in royal icing that the kids can then write on. Cookies have a better chance of making it over in one piece.
This would give the child his/her own cookie to sign and even decorate.

I agree with DanielleG. I lived on a military base overseas for four and a half years, and it would take us so long to get mail. That was for bases in Germany and Italy, and mail to Iraq takes even longer. I don't remember ever getting a box that WASN'T damaged in some way. Sometimes i felt like if the word Fragile was on the box, they treated it worse!

One trick I've heard is making round cookies the same size as a Pringles can and stack them in it. (Of course, clean the can and wrap the cookies in saran wrap or something.) The can helps things to not break as much (but some cookies will probably still break, no matter how well they are wrapped, so make extras!!!.)

Yeah, I wouldn't trust shipping a cake 5 miles from me, let alone overseas! No way, no how. I just don't see how it could show up and not be smooshed. All of the bumping and jarring in the delivery trucks, the plane rolling down the runway....scary!

I am going to use bubble wrap and some shredded red paper (for V Day). I hope my cookies get there uncrumbled! I made the cookies a bit thicker than normal. I think wrapping them are as fun as making them!

I've sent cookies overseas before and they actually get there pretty quickly. I vacuum packed them to keep them fresh for the guys. They came out great and the guys loved them. They ended up sending me money to make more and ship them out!

If you can vacuum pack them, that's the best way. I wouldn't send a cake. Those boxes are tossed and tossed. They don't care of it's marked "this side up" or "perishable" or what not. If they are light enough, they are usually thrown at some point in the shipping process.