Aquarium Cake

Cake decorating is a hobby of mine.

Last weekend one of my neighbors had a birthday. He LOVES aquariums. Seriously. When he moved in, he brought about 6 aquariums with him. So I made him this aquarium cake for his birthday. It was loosely inspired by the aquarium cake episode of Cake Boss.

I had never worked with poured sugar before, but it totally made the cake. These pieces of coral were so easy to make using an ice mold, and they turned out AMAZING. I’ve posted instructions below. I also used poured sugar to make the blue background for the cake, which really gave it an aquarium feel.

I have to say that making the fish was the most fun. Modeling chocolate is just like PlayDough, but obviously it tastes better. This blog has some excellent step-by-step instructions (and fixes) for making modeling chocolate.

For me, the big puzzle was what to use for the rocks at the bottom. After standing in the candy aisle of the grocery store for far too long, I decided that a neutral color was best since everything else on the cake would be bright. These hard candies worked perfectly!

Once I had all the components, putting everything together was easy. I started by putting some black fondant around the base of a rectangular cake.

Here’s the finished product. What do you think?

Poured Sugar Coral

You need:
Granulated Sugar
Water
Saucepan
Large Bowl
Ice
Food Coloring (I prefer Wilton Gel Food Coloring)
Candy Thermometer

Fill a large bowl with ice cubes. Combine two cups sugar and one cup water and food coloring in a saucepan. Using a candy thermometer, heat to 305 degrees, stirring constantly to prevent burning. (Be very careful not to burn yourself. I wore oven mitts throughout the process.) Once it reaches 305, immediately pour the sugar over the ice. Let it sit for 10 min. Pull out your beautiful sugar coral.