Finding Nemo Cake

Finding Nemo! Who doesn’t like that cartoon? I like the story cuz it’s not only about Nemo learning to be more independent, but it’s also about his father, Marlin, learning to trust and let go. But then again, if my wife and all my other children were eaten by a barracuda, I’d probably be as over-protective as him.

Finding Nemo Cake

So, birthday boy Ashton’s cake was a fun, colourful, under-the-sea buttercream decorated cake, topped with Finding Nemo toy figurines.  The cake is a yummy Devil’s Food Cake, filled with whipped dark chocolate ganache. I always use a buttercream dam around the filling to make sure that it doesn’t ooze out the side of the cake.

delicious whipped dark chocolate ganache filling

To get this nice shade of blue for the buttercream base, I used SugarFlair’s Icy Blue food gel. I really love SugarFlair’s food colouring as a little goes a long way, compared with Wilton’s. 

figuring out where to put the toppers

For the buttercream seaweed, I dug around my box of piping tips and found a neat tip, no. 67, which gave the nice ruffle-y seaweed-y effect I was going for! I actually fluked out with this one cuz I had no idea what this tip actually did. I piped out a few test seaweed with a small leaf tip mo. 352 and the no. 67, and the latter was a clear winner. Note, that I held the piping bag with the V-shaped opening on the tip pointing up as I was piping, and not with the opening off to the side as you would when piping normal leaves. 

happy, bright sea colours!

The red and yellow coral where piped using round nozzle piping tips, and the blue buttercream “wave” under Nemo was actually piped on without any piping tip at all! Nemo is actually standing on an Oreo cookie because I wanted him to sit up higher than the rest of his friends.  

love the buttercream seaweed and tiny bubbles

I added a few bubbles using royal icing, and a few sprinkles of light brown sugar here and there for “sand”. I wish I had taken a pic of the cake before I put all the toppers on it. It’s a perfect “under the sea” cake that you could easily turn into a Little Mermaid or Shark Tale just by switching up the toppers. 

view from the side

I love the final look of the cake, with the hand-written happy birthday message and all the bright, vibrant, colours. I wonder if Ashton said “Mine! Mine! Mine!” when he saw his cake, just the like seagulls in the Finding Nemo movie! Heheh. Happy 3^rd Birthday to big boy Ashton! 

closer view at Nemo & his friends

Happy 3rd Birthday, Ashton!
(pic courtesy of his mummy)