The Inaugural Post - Finding Nemo Cupcake-Cake, Part 1

My daughter decided on a Nemo cake for her 3rd birthday party. After looking at various designs on the internet and deciding that I was under no circumstances going to create Nemo, Marlin and Dorie characters out of fondant, I went to the Dinsey store and bought a set of Nemo action figures.  We decided on a cupcake-cake, which is perfect for kids parties since there's no cake to cut...each kid can just pull a cupcake out and they're good to go.  Here is the finished product:

And now for the instructions...I did this in 3 stages.  First was making the decorations for the top.  Second was baking the cupcakes and making the icing.  Third was the fun part...assembling the cupcake cake!


1) Making the Decorations
We made several decorations for the cake 4 or 5 days ahead of time, when we had some free time on the weekend.  I say "we" because my almost-3-year-old daughter was heavily involved, such a good (and occasionally messy) little helper!


First up was the coral.  I used twigs that I found outside of our house, but you could also use grape stems.  This was the only non-edible part of the cake (aside from the action figures).  To make the coral, we just dipped the twigs in melted white chocolate and then sprinkled different coloured sugars to coat them.

We chose bright colors for the coral, but anything will work.  You can melt white chocolate chips, baking squares or candy melts.  Just microwave it 30 seconds at a time, stirring in between, until it melts:

                                       

Dip the twig into the melted chocolate until it is completely covered:

Sprinkle the sugar over the chocolate-coated branches to coat and you're done!  I just layed them on a sheet of waxed paper to dry and then they can be handled:

Next up was what I believe is called sea sponge (also referred to as "long, pink, tubey things" in my kitchen).  I made up a batch of candy clay which I got from the "Cupcakes, Cookies and More, Oh My!" cookbook.  This stuff is awesome - easy to make, easy to colour and easy to work with...and far less messy than making marshmallow fondant, which is what I used to use for decorations before I discovered the candy clay recipe.  For the sea sponge, we colored it a pink shade.  To make it, we rolled it out using icing sugar to keep it from sticking to the counter, cut it into thin strips, rolled each strip into a tube and shaped the top so that it opens a little.  Here is the process in pictures:

Roll the clay out into a thin, long strip:

Using an offset icing knife (or regular knife), cut a strip double the length that you want your sea sponges to be, and  about a finger-width wide.  Mine were about 7" high by 0.5" wide:

Using your knife, start to roll up one edge of the strip...

...until it looks like this:

The clay is easy to work with.  Keep rolling and playing around with it until you get the seam fairly smooth and the top open:

Once I had made the tubes I grouped them together in bunches of 3 and brushed them with luster dust to give them a nice shine.  Here is the finished product:

Next up was the sea anemones.  This was also made using the candy clay, which we had colored an orange shade.

Start rolling!  Roll each piece between your palm and a flat surface such as a counter top.  Shape a bulb at one end.  You'll need about 15 of these for each anemone:

The easiest way to attach them all is to hold one piece upside down and start adding the other pieces:

When you have enough pieces put together, roll a small disc of the clay to create a base for the anemone.  You'll need this so that the base can stand up on your cake:

Attach the anemone to its base and you're done!  You can arrange the pieces so that they're going in all directions (which gives the look of an anemone underwater), or however you like:

And after a few hours of fun in the kitchen you're all done!  Next up is part 2 - making the cupcakes and icing.