Mermaid Wishes Cake

It's been a super busy week so I am a week behind on this post!

Last week we celebrated our best-friends' daughter Olivia's 3rd birthday at Goldfish Swim School in Farmingdale, one of the Swim Schools Dan runs. 

It was a pool party so the kids had a blast and the staff did an AMAZING job setting up the facility and decorating for the theme MERMAIDS!

I LOVE mermaids. Little Mermaid was one of my favorites growing up, next to Wizard of Oz and Sleeping Beauty. I have STRONG feelings about Ariel’s song Part of Your World, because I wanted to be part of HER world and swim all day under sea, flipping my fins with my fishy friends. Anyway, several months ago I saw a video on Instagram on how to make a Mermaid Cake so this gave me the perfect excuse to try it out! 

I made the buttercream beforehand, so I could make the cake with the boys and then decorate when they went to bed. 

For this cake I had an entire bottle of prosecco (don’t judge, it was Friday night). I wanted to watch Splash or Little Mermaid but Splash isn’t available on Amazon and Disney+ hadn’t dropped yet. I settled for Heart of Dixie episodes. 

I decided to marble the cake in the party theme colors and then make the scales in the same colors plus green and gold to accent. 

Some things about this bake:

• I decided to make the buttercream with whole milk instead of heavy cream because it’s being used as a binder for the fondant, so I didn’t feel it needed to be extra fluffy. 

• Don’t buy all the different colors of fondant. Just cut pieces of white fondant and add a 1-2 drops of gel coloring into the fondant and work until completely tinted. (Wear disposable gloves for this step, one pair for each color fondant)

• Use the back of a piping tip to make the scales. You will need about a million scales. 

• The tail was the BANE of my existence and I still don’t love it. I know there is a setting powder or spray that makes fondant hard but I couldn’t find it so I used a bunch of skewers to keep the tail upright. 

• When using edible glitter. Dab it with the brush, don’t brush it else it won’t get the best coverage. 

• Final note. In the video I watched they really carved a great tail base shape out of the cake. I totally psyched myself out so I did minimal carving making my tail a little stumpy, but tails can come in all shapes and sizes

Tails can come in all shapes and sizes.

Mermaid Wishes Cake

Basic Vanilla Cake:

3 cups all purpose flour

2 cups sugar 2 tsp baking powder 1 tsp salt 2/3 cup vegetable oil 1/2 cup butter 2/3 cup milk 3 eggs 1 tbs vanilla

1. Preheat oven to 350

2. Combine and mix dry ingredients, flour, baking powder, salt, in a bowl and set aside.

3. With your mixer cream butter and sugar until pale and smooth

4. Add milk, eggs, oil, and vanilla and mix until completely combined and smooth.

5. To create the marble effect, split the batter into two bowls and color with gel food coloring. Using a large spoon, alternate a spoonful of each color batter into each cake pan that has been lined with parchment and greased. The cake should look like layers of each color of batter one on top of the other. Using a toothpick swirl the batter around a little to make it marbled.

6. Bake until a toothpick comes out clean. For this bake I used 2- 6" cake pans so the baking took about 30 minutes.

Buttercream:

1 1/2 cups (3 sticks) of unsalted butter at room temperature

4 cups powdered sugar sifted

Pinch of salt

Milk or heavy cream added one Tbs at a time

Vanilla to taste about 1-1 1/2 Tbs

1. Cream butter and add powdered sugar one cup at a time and add pinch of salt and mix.

2. Add Milk and vanilla slowly so not to water down the icing and mix until nice a fluffy consistency. If not using immediately put in a container and refrigerate for 1 week or freeze for up to 2 months.

To Decorate:

1. Cut fondant into large pieces and color with gel food coloring. I used green, purple, and light blue food coloring. Roll fondant out and using the back of a piping tip cut a bunch of circles of each color out. Place scales on a baking sheet and set aside.

2. Cut the tops off one of the cakes once cooled and combine both cakes with buttercream. Shape the cake using a serrated knife little bits at a time until you get you desired shape.

3. Crumb coat the cake with he buttercream and chill for 15-30 mins.

4. While cake is chilling make the tail. I rolled snakes of fondant in each color and then pressed them together with water and using light pressure with the rolling pin. Shape into a tail shape. I also pushed toothpicks into the tail to keep the structure so it wouldn't get droopy once placed on the cake.

5. Frost the cake with buttercream and add the scales from top to bottom, alternating colors to create a fish scale pattern.

6. If you are using glitter on some scales using a clean paint brush and water, gently dab the glitter onto the scales.

7. Using a skewer or 3 in my case add the tail to the top of the cake.