Watercolor Fish Cake

My in laws came into town the other weekend to celebrate my father-in-laws big 66 birthday. That's the retirement age and a "big" deal. They live in Eastern Washington about 2 hours away, so it is always fun for them to come over to the "big" city and play. We lucked out weather-wise fortunately.

 My mother-in-law asked me if I would make a special cake for him for his birthday and of course I said yes! He is very much into fishing and so I started brainstorming ideas for the cake. Obviously I wanted it to be watery. I have seen a lot of techniques using fondant to make the waves or a ruffle in buttercream around the cake. I love the ruffle look but I thought maybe a bit "girlie"

Watercolor cake- Top of the cake

Naturally, I started my research on pinterest. I looked up "fish themed cake" and I saw this really cool one of a fish (made from fondant or gum paste) jumping out of the water...BINGO! That is what I wanted to do. 

The "Big" One Fish Themed Cake

 If you haven't noticed my quotations around "big" in this post then I am pointing them out now because this indeed is a "big" birthday. I loved the play on word of "big" as it relates to fishing.

For dinner we went to Ivar's on the piers to even suit the fish themed birthday even more. Unbeknownst to him as it was a bit of a surprise cake. I love the look on his face in this picture! He is thinking of his birthday wish but is just so tickled with joy at the same time! HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

Death By Chocolate Ganache Cake

Parents are the hardest people to shop for when it comes to gifts. And they always say you don't have to get them something but that just makes me feel guilty. I mean its their birthday. Typically for any other holiday like mother's day or father's day we don't exchange gifts. Instead I usually cook a meal and we spend time together and call it good. Birthdays are different though. Home made gifts are always a good choice. They have to like it no matter what. So this year for my step-dad's birthday I decided to make him a delicious chocolate cake, all from scratch!

Super Chocolate Cake

Now like my blog post title, this is my preferred method of death. Inside are 3 layers of light and fluffy chocolate cake with alternating layers of divine chocolate ganache frosted with the ultimate chocolate buttercream.

I think I died and went to Heaven

Now I know you are probably thinking HOLY CHOCOLATE ATTACK. But the end result was really surprising. Upon cutting it open and dishing up a slice it looked dark and dense but after taking a bite it was very light and had a semi-sweet taste to it.

"Petaling"

But enough chocolate talk - let's talk about the frosting method. This style is called "petaling." You use a Wilton tip #12 which is just a round tip. After applying the crumb layer as shown above (don't worry about imperfections since they get covered up), you make a line of vertical dots, I did 5. Then you take your spatula tool you used to frost the cake and you press and drag half of the dot to the right. Repeat this process all the way around the cake. WARNING: You must have a lot of patience to do this method. It takes time. 

The finished product

My parent's just got home from a trip when I surprised my dad with the cake and we all sang him happy birthday. Later after we were done with the cake my mom asked if I had the box for the cake to put it back in. I looked at her confused and said "what box?" She then said, "The one that it came in from the store." - oh mom. "I made it," I told her. "YOU MADE IT?!" That was the biggest compliment. Thanks mom.

LINKS! Here is the link to the cake recipe. Also a good tutorial I used to learn how to do the frosting technique.