Under-the-Sea Party: Fish Birthday Cake Tutorial

Photo by: Amber McGee Photography

 Zoey's First Birthday Cake!

I LOVE to cook, but baking - not so much.  I leave that to my sister and fellow blogger, Lesley, who for my birthday made me an awesome Tiffany's inspired cake using homemade fondant and everything. I should find a picture for you...

But, since it was my little girl's first birthday party, I had to make her a cute cake.

Zoey's birthday party was an Under-The-Sea/Mermaid themed party (blog post to come on the rest of the party soon!), and I was inspired by this amazing cake from My Cake School that I saw on Pinterest (of course).

I made it, and it wasn't quite as cool as the one on Pinterest, but it turned out pretty cute for my amateur skills. I actually wish I had bought special, brightly-colored food coloring.

I also got crazy and baked a carrot cake from scratch - I wasn't quite ready for Zoey to have the fully leaded sugar cake and frosting yet. I used the carrot cake and frosting recipe from Momtastic's Wholesome Baby Food, and they both turned out amazing. I will be making both again in the near future!
 

Side Note:  I thought I would need more cake than just the carrot cake, so I bought a good ole Betty Crocker strawberry cake mix, and made two boxes of those which actually ended up being the cake I used for the Fish Cake creation. The carrot cake was made into smaller cakes and cupcakes. Yes, I had so much cake leftover it was ridiculous.

Here is how I assembled the Fish Cake:

I drew out how it was going to work and ended up with one round 9" cake and 10 cupcakes. You can add another layer of cupcakes too but that is all I could fit on my tray. Oh yeah, don't forget to plan out what you are going to put in on! I should have used a larger board or something...

I cut the round cake in half and used one side for the head and the other side to make into the tail shape:

 Then on your drawing, map out what colors each one will be, frost away, and assemble:

Then the fun (or not so fun) part comes in - the eye, fish lips and fins. For the eye, I used a little white frosting and made a circle. I bought a black gel frosting pen for the eye lashes and used a little blue frosting for the eye ball:

 I also bought a hot pink frosting pen and used that for the lips and fins:

 And here it is!

Again, next time I would use some gel food coloring to make brighter colors for the fish. But, for my first time, I'm patting myself on the back.

And for all the extra cakes and cupcakes we made, this is what we did with those:

It was definitely worth all the effort. And trust me, if I can do it, you can too (probably better than I did!) :)

I can't believe my baby is one already (boo hoo)! 



Photo by: Amber McGee Photography

Here's another great cupcake recipe, honey cream cheese cupcakes, from Heidi!



Photo by: Amber McGee Photography

 Zoey's First Birthday Cake!

I LOVE to cook, but baking - not so much.  I leave that to my sister and fellow blogger, Lesley, who for my birthday made me an awesome Tiffany's inspired cake using homemade fondant and everything. I should find a picture for you...

But, since it was my little girl's first birthday party, I had to make her a cute cake.

Zoey's birthday party was an Under-The-Sea/Mermaid themed party (blog post to come on the rest of the party soon!), and I was inspired by this amazing cake from My Cake School that I saw on Pinterest (of course).

I made it, and it wasn't quite as cool as the one on Pinterest, but it turned out pretty cute for my amateur skills. I actually wish I had bought special, brightly-colored food coloring.

I also got crazy and baked a carrot cake from scratch - I wasn't quite ready for Zoey to have the fully leaded sugar cake and frosting yet. I used the carrot cake and frosting recipe from Momtastic's Wholesome Baby Food, and they both turned out amazing. I will be making both again in the near future!
 

Side Note:  I thought I would need more cake than just the carrot cake, so I bought a good ole Betty Crocker strawberry cake mix, and made two boxes of those which actually ended up being the cake I used for the Fish Cake creation. The carrot cake was made into smaller cakes and cupcakes. Yes, I had so much cake leftover it was ridiculous.

Here is how I assembled the Fish Cake:

I drew out how it was going to work and ended up with one round 9" cake and 10 cupcakes. You can add another layer of cupcakes too but that is all I could fit on my tray. Oh yeah, don't forget to plan out what you are going to put in on! I should have used a larger board or something...

I cut the round cake in half and used one side for the head and the other side to make into the tail shape:

 Then on your drawing, map out what colors each one will be, frost away, and assemble:

Then the fun (or not so fun) part comes in - the eye, fish lips and fins. For the eye, I used a little white frosting and made a circle. I bought a black gel frosting pen for the eye lashes and used a little blue frosting for the eye ball:

 I also bought a hot pink frosting pen and used that for the lips and fins:

 And here it is!

Again, next time I would use some gel food coloring to make brighter colors for the fish. But, for my first time, I'm patting myself on the back.

And for all the extra cakes and cupcakes we made, this is what we did with those:

It was definitely worth all the effort. And trust me, if I can do it, you can too (probably better than I did!) :)

I can't believe my baby is one already (boo hoo)! 



Photo by: Amber McGee Photography

Here's another great cupcake recipe, honey cream cheese cupcakes, from Heidi!