Mermaid Tales

Hello Steemians! This post is about one of my favorite cakes I have ever made.
It was a mermaid cake for a little girl's 6th birthday. She wanted a mermaid party and her Mom contacted me to make the cake. I was sent a photo of a beautiful 5-tier cake by R. C. Cake Designs and asked to include some of the decorative aspects.

The client only needed about 25-30 servings, so I definitely didn't make 5 tiers! She chose her 3 favorite elements from the inspiration photo, so that was my starting point. The top tier was a decorated dummy cake (styrofoam--not edible, but decorated like a real cake.) The topper was made of modelling chocolate; I used the end of a round piping tip to make the fish scale marks. I thought the candy pearl inside the modelling chocolate oyster was a cute touch. I dried the two separate shells over the back of a round measuring spoon to give it a cupped shape. Royal icing held the two shells together at the back.

One of the most challenging parts of the cake was the mermaid tail. I searched for a plastic or toy mermaid that I could use for this part, but couldn't find one that I liked. I decided to use gum paste to make one, but having never used gum paste before, I didn't realize how heavy it would be once it dried.

This was not good....the tail kept falling over when I tried to attach it to the cake! I finally ended up pushing a wooden skewer into the gum paste tail and then pushing the other end of the skewer into the cake and right down through the cake board (layers of corrugated cardboard covered in a food-safe paper). This was the only way to keep it from falling over and tearing the fondant "waves" on the bottom cake tier.
I also used gum paste to make the small sea horses on the top tier. The gold color is from Wilton Color Spray. It was the only product I could find locally.
The "sand" section of the cake was made using graham cracker crumbs combined with vanilla wafer crumbs over buttercream tinted to match the color of the crumbs. I added some tiny pieces of broken white chocolate to resemble broken sea shells. The sea shells and star fish were made from modelling chocolate using a Wilton silicone mold.

Painting on fondant is a relatively new technique and I had never tried it before. The name plaque on the top tier has an ombre effect that I made using a wet flat paintbrush and diluted sky blue gel food coloring. I used an edible marker to write the name.
I hope you enjoyed seeing my favorite cake. I got to try a few new techniques on this one and I learned a lot about modelling with gum paste. Come back soon; there will be more cakes and other fun stuff shared here!