Making of Mermaid Cake

Thanks to all the folks who wished my little one birthday wishes. I did mention in my previous post that I would try to post how I am making this mermaid cake provided I took pictures. Well, I did, but not enough. You see, I work on decorating in the night after kids have gone to bed. I can bake a cake when they are around, make frosting but cannot decorate the cake. They take my tools, ask a million questions and the older one even starts suggesting what color frosting I should use. It is very distracting. Some of the pictures are not good since I took in the night in yellow light. And I did forget to take pictures of couple of stages. I apologize for that, but this should give you a good base for running your imagination wild.

Another shot of the whole cake..

Just the mermaid..

Bottom tier was 9 " two layered carrot cake with cream cheese frosting. Top tier was 6" two layered vanilla cake with buttercream frosting. I added a little bit of cocoa powder to get the brown sand effect. Star fish, shells, fish, shark, sea horse, tortoise are made of chocolate. I bought the molds in Michaels and melted the chocolate and poured and let it set. I realized that the icing color does not work on chocolate in the middle of the night and that is the reason the sea creatures do not have any color on them. Sand on the top tier is graham cracker crumbs mixed with brown sugar. I made the crumbs unevenly on purpose. Now coming to the mermaid part, I bought a barbie whose hands and legs could be moved so that I can make her sit. Believe when I say I searched for a red haired barbie a lot. I couldn't get any. So, this one is a blond mermaid. I took off her clothes and made the 'bra' with fondant mixed with gumpaste. I did not have food safe pen to write and used the icing paste mixed with lemon extract and painted the lines. It spread and became very thick. If I make something like this again, I will surely buy those pens instead of using the brush. I then made the bottom part of it with green colored fondant gumpaste mixture and used one of the icing tips (back side) to make the scale. I shaped the fin and drew lines with the toothpick. I let this barbie, the rocks and the leaves dry for 3 days before assembling.

This is the barbie converted into mermaid with other fondant gumpaste creations..

Candy creations..

Coming to the coral reef, I piped some white chocolate on to wax paper randomly and sprinkled white nonpareils on before it set. I should have done this in royal icing so that I would've had better control in piping, but a lesson learnt too late.
The cake board is covered with a fabric with fish prints and covered with food safe plastic. I had sewed a pillow cover long time back and had some extra fabric which I used for this. Worked out great. Here are some pictures with few lines of description. As I said, I forgot to take pictures of some steps.
Cake iced before smoothing. I use the icer tip to ice and do not use the spatula method. I find this one faster and more effective in eliminating crumbs. (I do not crumb coat and ice later)..

And I let it crust and smooth with Viva paper and voila here is what you get.. (Don't you love viva paper towel?)

The top tier (brown one) is sitting on a 6" cake board. I cut a hole in the center of this board so that I can insert the plastic wilton dowel. I did not want to hammer the wooden dowel. The center dowel which runs through both the cake is a little shorter than the combined height of the two cakes. You insert it into the bottom tier and slide the top tier through it. I forgot to take the pictures of additional support around the center dowel on the bottom cake. They are bubble tea straws which are cut to the height of the bottom tier. Concept is to support the weight of the top tier by these dowels rather than the bottom tier cake.

Bottom tier with the center dowel inserted..

I then inserted the bubble tea straws (blue cut one in the picture) around this center dowel. About 6 of them and then put the top tier through the center dowel..

You smooth away as much as you can and start decorating. It is best to start from the top. I used sand as the border around the top tier where it sits on the bottom tier. Then placed all the candy creations and inserted the mermaid through a wooden skewer. I thought about where to write happy birthday and made her hold a banner and wrote on that. I think it was a cool idea even though it might not be clear to see the whole thing.
Just some random pictures..

Back of the cake..

Side..

Another picture of the full cake..

I hope you enjoyed this post. Any questions related to it, let me know and I'll try to answer them. Pin It