My Joy and My Song: A Coral Reef Cake

Thursday, November 30, 2017

A Coral Reef Cake

Cake-making is my zen.

It's my happy place.

Taking raw ingredients and turning them into something delicious and beautiful is satisfying beyond description.

And then I can give it away and make someone else happy, too.

My Dad said once that going fishing makes him feel like a kid again-- excited and over-the-moon happy.

That's exactly how I feel when I get to design and make a challenging new cake.

I got the idea for this first one on YouTube. Basically, you start with a stacked cake and then just pipe on anything that comes into your head. The two-tone icing is pretty simple-- ideally you'd just take a bigger bag and put two smaller bags inside it.

Next time, I think I'll make some fondant fish and really bring out the nautical theme.

Since two members of my church had their birthdays on coinciding days, I actually made two cakes yesterday. I wanted this second cake to be simple but elegant, with a little fun thrown in.

A few weeks ago, I found some alphabet-shaped cookie cutters at Wal-Mart and decided immediately that they were a Need, not just a Want. Ever since then I've been thinking about ways to use them.

I laid down the cookie cutters to spell out Emily's name and poured sprinkles inside the cutters. As you can see, it wasn't perfect, but it worked well enough and ended up looking cute.

I'm growing wise in my old age (my birthday's coming up-- I'll be 27) and so now I write the Happy Birthday message backwards-- I start with the name, then write 'Birthday' just above it so I know how to make it fit with the name, then I write 'Happy' last. I did the roses very last so I knew that everything would fit.

I didn't know this would happen (I mostly shoot from the hip while cake-designing), but the sprinkles actually adhered to one another while the cake was setting in the fridge, so they didn't move when we transported it.