Monday, August 6, 2012

Fish Cake

My dad had his 60th birthday over the weekend, so as he is a keen amateur fisherman, I decided to try my hand at making him a fish cake.



My model was this photo of a Western Australian Dhufish, from the Department of Fisheries website.  This large fish is only found off the coast of Western Australia, and is a very popular eating fish here.  The distinctive black stripe across its face made it a ideal model, as my dad recognised it straight away!  Hoorah!

As per usual, I was running late getting the cake finished, so my photos aren't brilliant.  As soon as it was finished I bolted outside with it to catch the last of the natural light (above).

But I've included a couple of night-time photos too (taken at the party), as I think they show the shadows and shiny highlights off better:


The fish was all cake, apart from the small bottom fin (near the head), which was solid RTR fondant.  The cake itself was lemon cake, filled with lemon curd and lemon Swiss Meringue Buttercream.  It was covered in the same SMBC, and then in pale grey RTR fondant.  I then made the scale pattern using three different sizes of little cutters (two leaves and a cloud, if you're interested!).  Next came the colour & fishy pattern effect, which I achieved by covering my entire house in black food colouring painting the cake with dry silver lustre dust and powdered black food colouring.

The Muffin made the eye, and was very proud of herself!


I must say I was Very Extremely Happy with how this cake turned out - it's always nice when things go according to plan!  And Dad was thrilled, so that's the most important thing.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is AMAZING. Really and truly.

Sugary Flower said...

Thank you so much! :)

Anonymous said...

I have this exact fish to make in a months times! Did you use a cake board under the actual fish? Did you have a template to go off? Cheers

Sugary Flower said...

Hi Anonymous - no I didn't use a secondary board under the fish. I constructed it on baking paper, and left the paper there when I transferred it to the display board (which was covered in wood-grained fondant). Obviously I wouldn't recommend leaving baking paper under a cake if you're a pro, but this was my dad's cake and I knew I'd be cutting it up at the party, so it was fine for me. If I was making the cake for someone else, I would either cut a cardboard cake board to shape, or just make the fish on the display board and then cover the board around the fish afterward. Probably the latter. I didn't use any kind of template - just had the photo next to me. I cut the shape freehand from a large rectangular cake. Good luck!

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