4 Following Seas: Dolphin Birthday Party Step One: The Cake!

So, a little backstory on my Emily. She is elaborate. Anything you can dream up to do, make, play or create...she can top you by making it more elaborate than you ever intended. It's her gift. We don't paint nails A color, we do patterns, designs, multiple layers...you get the point.

When I asked her a while back what kind of birthday party she chose a dolphin theme. Check! (I see pottery painting dolphins and a sheet cake with some blue "water" frosting and a dolphin drawn by Olivia.)

Nope. Not elaborate enough. She went rummaging through the darn internet and found this photo:

I tried everything to dissuade her from this but her heart was set on a fondant cake. (Fondant!!! Isn't that the stuff they use on those crazy cake baking cook-off shows?) well, knowing my mom would be here and she has baking superpowers, I agreed.

Sadly, the pottery painting place was closed the week of Christmas and thus the party would take place after Emma left. Drat.

As the day approached, I did what anyone in my position would do. I tried again to talk her out of it and started scanning the internet when it didn't work. (I should mention here that I'm not a fan of cake, frosting, fondant or anything to do with making/eating them. Some folks love this stuff, I'm not one of them.)

Here we go:

Bake cakes

Shave them flat (I have since learned that there exists a fabric strip that you can purchase on Amazon to wrap on the outside of your cake pans which will promote a perfectly even baking = no dome top.) I won't be buying them because I don't intend to make a career out of this but maybe you need this information.

Make a batch of chocolate buttercream frosting.

Duh.

Frost

Refrigerate. (Insert a night off here because this is enough caking for one day)

Wake up. Check your Facebook page again for the sage advice from your baking savvy friends and start the marshmallow fondant. This wasn't very hard (melt marshmallows and crisco in the microwave and then add a gob of powdered sugar) BUT I realized at this point I had forgotten the water and when I achieved this resulting goop I was sure I had messed it up and sent Emily running next door for more marshmallows to start over. GRR.

While she was gone I read the part that said, at this point your fondant will be lumpy and sticky. Hmmm, lets give it a try. After a few minutes of kneading it with more sugar it morphed into this smooth dough! Haha, success :)

Add color + more kneading to make it pink

And blue (who has grey food coloring??) Cake people, that's who.

At this point, all those silly baking shows came in handy. I just rolled it out, flopped it on the cake and started smoothing. Full disclosure: I did learn that there are all sorts of fondant tools one should have - smoothers, cutters, rollers - pshaw, but again, you might be more serious about this than I.

Bad photo, my cake looks really crooked here but I assure you it wasn't. Notice too how all that excess sugar just melted into the cake. I was unsure how I was going to get that off but it took care of itself. Magic!

Makin waves!

Stick it on

Now at this point, you are getting impressed right? Me too - but I have my limits. I was informed that to make the dolphin in the "inspiration" photo I would need gumpaste (fondant wouldn't hold up). Sorry Miss Elaborate, you have just reached said limits. Thankfully she was just as happy to reach in her Barbie drawer and pull out Zuma, the already pink, glittery plastic dolphin. Plop.