Max’s 1st Birthday / Sea Theme Cake

I made this 2 tier cake for my son’s first birthday. It was my first attempt at making a 2 tier cake but I was happy with the final result – in fact my sister-in-law thinks it is my best of all time! The bottom tier was white chocolate mud and the top tier was dark chocolate mud so all our guests could choose their favourite flavour.

The theme came about because I chose a sea theme for the nursery before my little guy was born and he was given the Fisher Price Musical Seahorse from his grandparents, which soon became a favourite toy.

I did search through the cake shop to find as many sea themed cookie cutters as possible, and came up with a starfish, a shell and a turtle. Using them to cut out the shapes, I then added dimension and texture to all the pieces with my modelling tools and my sponge mat. I got creative with the turtles and added a different colour oval (which I freehanded with a knife) as the shell, which I then cross-hatched  Seaweed was just freehanded too, and the fish were made using half of a circle cutter, and then freehanded to form the tail. The sand is just finely crushed sweet cookies and the fondant edge was finished off with buttercream piping with the same tint as the fondant.

I had a go at making the larger 3D creatures with very little modelling experience, but it was fun trying to teach myself! In order to save some fondant, I made the seahorse as a hollow figure and had to balance it standing on its small tail. To keep it upright, a toothpick was inserted into its side and through to the cake. Its fins are just made from thinly rolled fondant and ruffled using the large ball tool with my foam mat. The octopus was just made while I was sitting in front of the TV playing around, and is made up of very, very simple pieces and shapes.