My 14 year old son Drew and I needed to make a cake for a close friend’s birthday. He loves sushi so we decided on a Homemade Sushi Cake! I wanted to keep it simple but Drew wanted to go all out! We got some ideas on the web and added a few of our own.
After several trips to the craft store and super market we were ready to go. We made a 2 layer marble cake with the top layer a little smaller and covered in white butter cream and rolled white fondant (my son is great with handling fondant. He has much more patience than I do. I think that the best tasting premade fondant is Satin Ice bought online.) We then painted it to make it look like a cutting board. We used edible gel coloring diluted with vodka. We formed the chop sticks and dipping bowl out of gum paste (just like edible clay- bought at the craft store in the cake decorating section) and painted them as well. The soy sauce is chocolate syrup and the ginger is dried apricots rolled thin with a rolling pin. You can really mold almost anything out of gum paste.
Making the sushi was the fun part. We made molded rice crispy treats for the rice and dipped them in melted white chocolate and added some white pearl sprinkles before the chocolate hardened. The salmon, shrimp and yellow tail are molded and painted gum paste. The California roll is pieces of dried mango, kiwi and pineapple. The nori is fruit leather cut into strips and wrapped around the rice crispy treats. We made fortune cookies out of gum paste by rolling out flat circles, pinching the middle and folding. We printed out our own silly fortunes and stuck them inside. We arranged all of the items on the cake using icing as the glue. We even had some left over pieces and placed them on the board around the cake. We made a birthday banner out of rolled gum paste and added words written in edible marker.
It was hard to cut into the cake after all of that hard work but everyone really loved it and it was worth every minute. I really love cooking and cake decorating with my son. He is very creative and keeps me calm when I get stressed while decorating. He plays sports and does other activities with his father but this is our special mother–son bond.
The cake looked and tasted amazing!