I made this Bright Fish Cake for my daughter’s 2nd birthday party. The day before the party I combined two packet mix cakes together and baked it in a rectangular baking dish. I then froze the cake. Once completely frozen I took the cake out and with a sharp knife I drew a football/oval shape on the cake (using the entire length of the cake) once the cake was a little defrosted (don’t wait until it’s completely defrosted as this makes it too soft to get a ‘clean’ cut). I cut out the oval shape which left me with four similar ‘corner’ pieces.
Place the oval shape on a slightly greased cake board (this helps the cake to stay in place) then using the corner pieces that were cut off place one each on the top and bottom of the oval shape as fins on the fish body. Then turn the last two corner pieces outwards and place at the back of the body to form a tail (I cut a tiny bit of each piece to help them sit better against the body).
I then covered the entire fish with a butter frosting/icing that I colored slightly orange. You may also like to use a dollop of icing between the fins and tail and body to help keep them in place.
With a knife draw a faint curved line where you want to place the first row of Smarties. I chose to use all orange Smarties for the first row then worked my way backward towards the tail row by row using multi colored Smarties as the scales.
The fish eye is made with a large marshmallow cut in half with a brown Smartie on top. I then dragged a fork lightly along the fins and tail to create lines to help give it a real look.
Lastly I colored 2 cups of coconut with blue coloring and sprinkled it around the fish on the cake board to look like water.
I didn’t want to buy a fish pan. Thanks so much for the directions. I’m going to give it a try for my son’s second birthday.