Happy Birthday Grandpa Joe!

Last Monday was Joe's dad's birthday. So I of course had to make him a cake. He really likes chocolate and fishing, so I thought I'd make him a cake with a chocolate fish on it. Ta da!

This cake was super fun to make. First I baked two 8" round chocolate cakes, filled them with vanilla icing and semi-sweet chocolate chips, and iced the whole thing in vanilla frosting. Then I mixed together some piping gel and blue dye to make a goopey, watery type substance to look like a river. I bought some candy rocks at the grocery store to go all around the bottom, like a river bed, and in a couple spots on top to represent a river bank. I piped a few tufts of river grass, wrote "Happy Birthday Grandpa" on it, and attached my fish. (You are supposed to write on your cake before you do any other decorations so that you have enough room and you don't have to worry about messing anything up. That is good advice that I will remember next time so that I don't end up with blue piping gel all over my arm and the words are straight.)

So about this fish.... it is a rainbow trout made out of melted chocolate that I mixed candy colors into. First you print out whatever image you want to make and cover it with wax paper (or if you are artistically inclined you could free hand it).Using dark chocolate in a piping bag trace the general outline and any details you want. I used a toothpick to pull the chocolate in lines for the fins. Then you fill in the background with whatever colors you want, in this case muted rainbow stripes. After letting it harden completely, peel it off the wax paper and turn it over. Then you add whatever other detail to the front that you need. I added the dark speckles, the pectoral fin, and the eye to give it a little dimension. This was way easier to do than I expected, and wicked fun, so expect to see a lot of chocolate painting/molding on future cakes. 

This was my first attempt at a fun cake. And it was satisfying in a different way than my previous cakes. This cake was all about making it look like something, but it certainly also tasted good. It was fun to try to figure out what to use to make things look realistic, but not too real. If you google rainbow trout cake you get some disturbing things. I'll never be one to make a cake look like something that is not a cake, but I will be more than happy to put anything on a cake.