Beach Themed Cake

An elegant Seaside Wedding needs a cake that brings the beauty of the beach and ocean life to it. This Beach Themed Cake is adorned with fondant sea shells and starfish as well as coral made out of royal icing.

So if you’ve been wondering what I do when I’m not sharing delicious recipes with all of you… this is one of them!  I make specialty cakes for weddings and birthdays on the side.  It’s a hobby that I picked up some years ago and have developed over the years.  Today it’s so easy to learn all kinds of new techniques through the internet.  There are so many blogs that give great tutorials and with YouTube videos you can learn how to do just about anything!  Hopefully I will get my own YouTube channel up and running in the near future so I can share some of my knowledge with you!

I was so excited to be asked to make this beautiful Beach Themed Cake for Paul’s cousin this past weekend! I’ve been wanting to make a Beach Themed Cake for quite some time now and finally got the opportunity.

The wedding will be a destination wedding taking place on the beautiful island of Bermuda in June.  The bride and groom decided since it’s going to be a smaller sized wedding that they would forego a Wedding Cake so this Bridal Shower Cake was her Wedding Cake. We even all gathered around and sang “The Bride Cuts the Cake”  for her!

I made my signature Chocolate Cake recipe and filled it with a White Chocolate Mousse that I’ll share the recipe for later this week.  Todays post is dedicated to the process of how I put a cake like this together.

After I bake my cakes and remove them from their pans I always level each layer.  When you are making a tiered cake it’s important to make sure your cake is level.  I have a special cake leveling tool which makes it easy but you can also use a long narrow knife to trim it.  I also like to go around the edges of the cake to make sure the sides are flush as well.

After my cake is nice and level it’s ready for the “crumb coat” or to be “dirty iced”.  This is a very thin layer of frosting that I apply.

I don’t care if you can see any of the the crumbs at this point because the next step is to pop it in the fridge or freezer to harden.  Then I take it out and apply the final layer of frosting. This cake also had fondant covering it.

What is fondant?  The best way I can describe fondant is as a sugar dough.  I usually buy mine but I have also made it before too.  It’s not difficult to make.  It’s basically a melted down marshmallow mixture but I prefer to buy it.  Putting a cake like this together is very time consuming so that’s one place I will not go through the trouble of making it from scratch!

You just knead the fondant well and then roll it out like you would a pie crust.  Then you drape it over your frosted cake and smooth it out.  Ok….I know that made it sound really easy.  It’s not.  Don’t be discouraged though.  The more you work with fondant and practice the easier it gets.  Just keep watching lots of tutorials for tips and tricks and you’ll get it.  🙂

The seashells and starfish are also made out of fondant.  I used a fondant mold for the starfish and some plastic candy molds for the shells.

I set them on wax paper on a cookie sheet and let them dry out for about a week to harden.  You need to let them set for at least a day or two.  Then once they were hardened I applied some petal dust.  Petal dust is a powdered food coloring that you can brush on dry to add a soft color to the fondant.

Once I’m happy with the shading I boil a pot of water on my stove. Once I have a nice steam rising from the pot I hold each shell and starfish over the steam for a few seconds.  It helps set the coloring and gives the shells a nice sheen.

The other addition that I made was coral made out of royal icing.

I made a batch of royal icing and placed it in a pastry bag fitted with a number 5 tip.  I piped a coral design on wax paper making sure to overlap  so it would hold together once I lifted it off.  I just free handed it but you could also print off a coral design, place it under your wax paper and just trace over it as you pipe. Let your coral set overnight so it’s nice and hard.  Once it’s ready carefully peel the wax paper away from your coral.  It will be very brittle just like real coral so you need to be very careful.  If it breaks thats ok.  It still looks natural. Real coral generally has broken pieces but if you want you can just add fresh icing to stick the broken piece back in place.

The sand is just brown sugar that I sprinkled on.  Make sure you coat your dollop of frosting well so no white shows through. Then place your shells and star fish where you like and you’re done!

Whether you’re planning a Seaside Wedding or you have a special birthday and love the ocean this Beach Themed Cake is perfect for either!

I hope you enjoyed learning a little bit more about what I love to do outside of Family Table Treasures!  Make sure you stop back for that White Chocolate Mousse recipe this week.  I also have some tasty dinner recipes coming up over the next couple of days too!

Sharing at: Wow Us Wednesdays  Create It Thursday

Until then here are some of my latest recipe posts for you to try.  Just click on the picture for the recipe.