Bubble Guppies

Sometimes it's great to be able to repeat a cake. Then you get to do all the things right a second time around (hopefully) and better your effort before. A mummy who found me online gave me that opportunity when she asked if I would do a Bubble Guppies cake for her little girl.

Mummy M contacted me almost 3 months in advance about the cake (thank you!), we waited patiently for this day to come. She wanted a 2-tier chocolate cake featuring her little girl's favourite Bubble Guppies friends. Ever since I got to know these adorable underwater characters, I am hooked to their cuteness. If you recall, it was Lauren's cake back in November last year that probably caught Mummy M's eye. For that cake, I only had the bandwidth to make Mr Grouper, so this time round I was eager to create the lot!

The cast of characters

While I was making these cuties, my trusty iPhone camera failed me :( Frustratingly, it just wouldn't focus on near objects so I was unable to document the fondant crafting in closer detail. But as you can see in the above pic, I made the Bubble Guppies, Mr Grouper, little fishes, starfish, seashells, sea sponges and billowing kelp, all ready to decorate the cake with.

In the process of researching this cake, I came across a few fine examples online. I even found on Etsy.com that you can purchase ready-to-use Bubble Guppies fondant toppers - check it out here. Some of these crafters are charging USD175 for a set of these characters in 3D. Talk about enterprising!

But I decided to make these with gum paste in 2D. They adhere better to the cake and work much better in our weather (yes I've learnt all my baking lessons in 100% humidity). The easy ones to make in 3D are the seaweed pieces (I twisted these into a twirl for maximum effect) and the starfish and seashells. They may not be the main characters but they are totally essential in setting the scene.

Mummy M also asked if I could make the cake a bit more girly since it was obviously going to be a predominantly blue cake, so I had Prudence's name in pink outline and dusted it with edible pink sparkles - when in need of some girly glam, just add sparkles - does the trick every time ; )

What I love most about the cake has got to be the bottom-of-the-sea look. I crushed some digestive biscuit and sprinkled it all around the cake base to make it look like the sea bed. Digestives rock!

Put the biscuit crumbs in a cup for easy sprinkling

Seabed Biscuit

And here's the completed cake... I'm very happy with it and so were the recipients, yay ; )

Mr Grouper leads the pack

Happy Birthday Prudence

November is Birthday Month!

November is a big birthday month! My boy Jake will be turning 3 and a few of my friends are celebrating their little one's birthday as well so it's going to be a busy month with quite a few exciting cakes for me to work on.

First of, I would like to apologise to those of you who tried to contact me for orders in the month of October. As you can tell from the lack of updates in October, I was away on vacation with the family. While we had a great time feasting up a storm in Italy and Shanghai, I did miss my baking and blogging and being in touch with readers who were kind enough to enquire about my cakes. Well, I'm now back and one of the first cakes I made upon returning is for a good friend's daughter.

While preparing to make Lauren's cake, I was introduced to the world of 'Bubble Guppies'. For the unacquainted, Bubble Guppies is a popular preschool comedy musical children's television series by Nickelodeon. We had Sesame Street in the 70s, they have Bubble Guppies in 2012.

Lauren actually had a birthday cake for her party made by another very talented baker mum. It was a gorgeous 2-tier Bubble Guppies cake (unfortunately I don't have any pictures) but I had the pleasure of making a similar theme cake for her school party ; )

I decided to make one of the Bubble Guppies characters that wasn't on her party cake - Mr Grouper!

I used tracing paper to capture the shape for the fondant cut-out that was going on the cake. It was easy enough... Mr Grouper sure was good fun to make.

Mr Grouper on tracing paper

Actualising Mr Grouper with fondant

Happy Birthday Lauren

I made little bubbles, seashells, starfishes, and swaying sea plants to embellish the sides of the cake. That blue on the fondant is one of my most favourite colours. Inside is a moist chocolate cake made with Valrhona cocoa and a rich chocolate ganache filling.

I'll gladly make this cake again ; )