Under the Sea Theme Cake Decoration - Tutorial

I have promised to some of my beloved readers, that I will post a simple tutorial for a particular birthday cake which I prepared for Bianca's birthday last April. You may see the post about this cake here.

Since it is an "Under the Sea" theme, I had to fill the surface with sea creatures. I browsed around and found useful tutorial here and here. Others were just made using my imagination.

I will start with how to cover the cake with rolled fondant. I made two round shapes of choco "lapis surabaya" cakes (9 and 6 inches). Then spread some chocolate ganache on top and side of the cooled cakes and let them sit until set. You may prepare the cake a day before.

Then you may color the rolled fondant with the desired color. For this cake, I used mixed of blue and yellow gel coloring until I got the color I like. Flatten the colored fondant using rolling pin on powder sugar dusted surface. Keep rolling until the desired thickness (not too thin, so it would not tear during covering, app. 4-5mm). During rolling, lift up the fondant once awhile to avoid sticking on the table. Put the rolling pin in the middle and lift up the fondant unto it. Transfer the fondant immediately on top of the cake. Smoothen the to surface and then the side using the easy glide smoother. Trim off the excess fondant using sharp knife. For complete photo tutorial, check this out.

Now move on to the decoration, the above picture is all of the sea creatures I put on the cake.

Here is some cockle sea shells.

Start with flatten up some colored fondant, and cut out a triangle/wedge with a little curve on the bottom. Then using a knife, make some lines/grits as shown on the second picture (but do not cut it). Pinch the narrow end and fold it in or tuck it under the shell (as shown on picture no. 3 and 4). You may put some balled up wax paper or plastic to help keeping the shells curvy while drying up.

Next some sea serpents.

Make 1 little ball and 5 long skinny snakes as shown on the first picture. Use your palm hands to roll it skinnier. Arrange it as shown on the second picture. Flatten up the center ball.

Other simple sea shells. The worm sea shells can be made by coiling a snake long shape of fondant and pulling the coil gently (see the above picture - yellow and pink worm sea shells).

For simple sea shells, make a tadpole shape as shown on the first picture, and then curl in the smaller end and glue it on the big end using a little amount of water (as shown on picture no.2).

To make some seaweed, you just need 3 long skinny snakes and put one ends together. Then trace a line in the middle of each leaf using fondant embosser (see the above picture) to give a unique pattern. Sorry I did not take a step by step pictures for this.

Some starfish can be made by putting together 5 arms and trace a line with the embosser just as I did with the seaweeds. (No step by step pictures available, sorry).

The last one, I made some coral reef by putting together 7 short pipes (just at one end), and squeezed them to give smaller shape on that end. Then make a hole on each pipes using toothpicks. No step by step pictures for this either.

Arrange the sea creatures on the cakes and stick them on using some water. To make sand, please read this post.

Well, that's it..Hopefully readers can understand my simple explanation. Please contact me for further questions on this simple tutorial. Happy decorating!