Here’s a cute simple tutorial on how to make a realistic fish cake.

How to Make a Realistic Fish Cake

Here fishy fishy! I am so excited more and more friends are coming to see me for cakes. Personally, I just love baking and then I get to decorate them. It’s like a combination of two of favorite things. Food and art. My favorite are the people that just let me have full reign. The ones that have an idea of what they want but let me do my own spin on it. It’s also when I jump out of my comfort zone and try new things. It allows me to expand my talents and skills, or… a nice learning experience haha.

For this project, I took on two new challenges. I decided to try my hand at carving and I decided to buy an airbrushing machine to try airbrushing the cake. Now let me just say here that you don’t need an airbrush machine to do it. Technically you can do what I did with the cake board and just paint the fish with a brush and food coloring gels. White fondant is basically a blank canvas for you to put whatever you want on it.Learn how to make cake board here.
I eventually will start videoing these projects but for now, the pictures will have to do. I tried to take as many as I could throughout the process.

RELATED: How to Make Fondant Look Like Wood

What you need:

– favorite cake recipe or cake mix
– favorite icing recipe or icing
– decorating tools
– angled spatula
– airbrush machine OR paintbrush/food gel colors/alcohol
– chocolate ganache

Steps:

1. Bake cakes and allow them to cool. While they are cooling, print a picture of the fish you are making and a clipart outline of the fish to your size preference.You can print a template of fish or draw the shape to your size cake you need. (I used cardstock rather than regular paper as your cake gives off some moisture and can make it hard to work with.)
2. Assemble the rectangle cakes together adding buttercream in between.
3. Put the cake template on top the rectangle cakes and start cutting away the biggest pieces first.
4. Then, start cutting close to the outline until you are satisfied with the outline of the cake. 
   

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5. Now that you have the outline of the fish, it’s time to start rounding the edges to make it more of a fishlike dimension. Using a serrated knife, angle your knife sideways, cutting slivers over the top of the cake.
6. Once you have the fish all carved to your liking, add chocolate ganache to the whole cake. This provides a nice crumb coat and smooth finish for putting fondant on top. When the whole cake is covered put it in the fridge for 10-15 mins for the ganache to harden. 
7. Roll out fondant to cover the size of your cake. Roll it loosely on the rolling pin and then roll it slowly back over the cake. Try to lay it as flat as possible, smoothing the top first and then slowly smoothing down the sides making sure there is no air bubbles or cracks. Try to work quickly and not to tug too much on the fondant. Cut away the extras and use spatula to push edges of fondant under the cake bottom. 
8. If you haven’t moved your cake to your cake board yet, now would be the time. Make sure you push any edges back under the cake once you move it onto the cake board. 
9. I added seran wrap over most of the cake board to protect it while airbrushing the cake.
10. Whether you are painting the cake or using the airbrush machine, start with the lighter colors first. Looking at your picture, start with the lightest colors you see. For me, it was yellow. I left the belly white and added yellow to most of the rest. Then I added a green of the top half of the fish. Then a dark green and then a fark brown over just the top of the fish and a few dots down the side. Last I used black for the eye. 
11. Lastly, I made a pink worm but just rolling a long thin sausage and add small indented lines horizontally across it. I piped with buttercream icing the words “Finally Hooked” on the bottom of the cake board. 

There you have it. I like to break these kinds of cakes up into different days. It makes it easier to tackle, especially with baking the cakes and waiting them to cool. Once your cake has the ganache or icing on it, it keeps the cake fresh so you don’t have to worry about your cake not seeming fresh if you start a few days before. This also helps with providing you with extra time for any unforeseen circumstances that arise, (like randomly dealing with 4 bees in your house-haha! but that’s a story for another time).

I can wait to see your creations! What kind of cake should I make next?

Till next time!

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