Coolest Swimming Pool Cake

I made this swimming pool cake for our twin nieces who are competitive club swimmers and represent their area in the country.

Its made of 3 8″ square cakes, two side by side with the third cut in half and butted alongside the two others. The cake should then measure approx 16″ x 12″.

I then filled the cake with blue buttercream and strawberry jam. Measuring a 2″ border all the way round I then cut out the indentation for the pool, only approx 1″ deep. (You don’t want to cut in too far otherwise you’ll interfere with the filling). Score the cake with a knife in the ‘pool’ area to ensure the cake can be lifted out easily – know you have the ’empty pool’!

I then coated the entire cake in apricot jam and used 1kg of white fondant icing, rolled out to cover the cake entirely. Ensuring the the pool indentation remains.

A week prior to making this cake I cut each tile individually using a small 1cm square cutter from rolled white fondant. To cover this size cake used approx 800 tiles. This, needless to say was somewhat time consuming and perhaps a little crazy!

The edge of the pool was covered in ‘aqua’ coloured tiles and glazed with confectioners glaze to achieve a ‘wet’ look. All tiles were fixed into position using royal icing.

I coloured several tiles blue and cut them smaller so that I could incorporate our nieces names into the tiling of the pool. One side says ‘Happy 15th’ and the other side stated their names. I thought this was a nice original way of including the birthday message – if again time consuming!

Once the cake had been tiled I then filled the edges with fondant to give a neater appearance.

Colouring some royal icing blue I then poured this into the pool indentation – before it sets make sure you have your lane ropes ready to put in!

The lane ropes were made from ‘candy’ necklaces, I selected the colours needed and re-threaded them onto string with each end secured into the cake into position using cocktail sticks.

You don’t want to add the lane ropes after the ‘water’ has set as it will crack the surface.

The swimmers were little plastic models that I painted in different colours using acrylic paint. They were then set into fondant icing on the ‘blocks’ 4 ‘blocks’ were made in total for the four lanes each measuring 2″ in width.

I modelled the pool steps and handrail from fondant, also the sports bags, towels, flip-flops, life-ring, and kick-board floats and coloured where needed using food colouring and small brush.

Using blue tinted piping-gel I then poured onto the surface of the water and using a brush spread over it’s entirety. This made the water look wet.

Finally, the whole cake was the given one coat of confectioners glaze.

The girls loved it! If you make one like this make sure you’ve got plenty of time on your hands!


13 thoughts on “Coolest Swimming Pool Cake”

  1. Hey, I might do this for class, do you think I would have ANY chance at all if I made it in 2 hours (an hour for baking and an hour for decorating) I wouldn’t be able to do the tiles, but I think it would still look really effective?

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  2. I found male and female swimmers diving in off the blocks at FancyFlours-dot-com. Just search the site for male or female swimmer. They were $6.95 each but a really nice size and are made of resin.

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  3. My niece is coming home from Guam and wants me to make a swimmer’s cake as she competes…Can’t seem to find the figurines…can you tell me where you got them?

    Great cake!! Thanks for sharing..

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  4. I have a swimming granddaughter who requested a birthday cake in the swimming theme but I cannot locate any swimmer figurines to use on it. As a grandma who always comes through with great birthday cakes, I hate to disappoint her. Any suggestions. I have tried fancyflours website but they do not carry anything like that.

    Sad
    Grandma

    Reply
  5. Ok hi love the cake long really would you say it would take if you didn’t do the tiles can I get it finished in about 5 hours that includes actrully making the cake and putting it in the oven?

    Thanks and also
    What have you used to make the water?

    Reply
  6. that is like the coolest cake. im gonna try to make it for a swimteam banquet we are having in a week. mine wont look nearly as good as this but im just 13

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  7. I am making a cake for an anniversary of our swimming club. Please can you tell me where I can find the figurines.
    thank you

    Reply

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