Word's Out!

 A friend from church heard that I have been making cakes, and asked if I would make one for an upcoming baby shower.  The theme was One fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish by Dr. Seuss.  I was excited to take on the challenge.  I made a white cake with raspberry frosting.  This one took a LOT of time, but the end result was worth it.

 A few days in advance I traced all of the fish onto parchment paper, rolled out fondant and used the templates to cut out each fish.  I then came back and painted the details on each fish using black food coloring mixed with lemon extract.  They were so cute!  For the topper, I made 2 of each fish and "glued" a skewer between the two.  I found a video on youtube that showed me how to make some strong edible glue.  Between that and royal icing, I don't have much difficulty getting anything to stick to my cakes any more.

The top and bottom tier were covered with fondant (again, thankful I was covering some of the bottom portion of each layer with more fondant to cover up my mistakes).  I've found that the more color I add to fondant, the more it dries and cracks.  Someday, maybe I'll have an airbrush.  I miraculously matched some frosting for the shell piping around the bottom of each tier.  A few weeks later, I learned that I did the piping wrong, but it turned out okay.

Biggest difficulty with this cake was that I made all of the fish a few days ahead of time (laying them over pans to dry with somewhat of a curve to them) and some of the pieces didn't fit together properly.  I also had to create some spacers to help them to lie flat against the cake in areas where some of the fish was on the waves and some not (different layers of fondant).

This was the very first cake I've had to move.  What a stressful endeavor!  Have I mentioned that the structural integrity of a cake is really important?