You know what I'm not into? Cakes that don't look like cakes. Where are the cakes of my childhood? You know, the absolutely cooked buttercream versions with lollies that did all the heavy lifting?
It's Pallion Point's birthday and I can't find a fitting fish cake, so naturally I had to make one of the fish that kicked it all off, the Coral Trout. I used Nagi's vanilla cake recipe because she is a national icon, but I baked it in a 20 x 30cm tin. I did some girl math, made a template, cut her out, stuck her together, couldn't quite get my buttercream red so we settled on pink and then I covered it in a lot of blue mini M&Ms.
And you know what? I'm quite proud of my efforts and I definitely think it would have earned a place in the Women's Weekly Birthday Book. If you know, you know.
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Ingredients
1 quantity vanilla cake (Recipe Tin Eats Vanilla Cake)
1 quantity buttercream (Recipe Tin Eats Vanilla Cake)
red food colouring
yellow food colouring
blue mini M&Ms
yellow mini M&Ms
black licorice
strawberry strap (or red licorice)
Method
Grease and line 20 x 30 cm rectangular tin. Bake cake according to recipe and cool on wire rack. Using coral trout cut-out template (download here), trim cake into fish shape.
Tint most of buttercream pink with red food colouring. Tint a smaller portion peach-orange with red and yellow food colouring. Spread pink buttercream evenly over the body of fish, blending peach-orange along belly, as shown.
Position yellow M&Ms for eye with small circle of black licorice underneath. Add a fine strip of licorice above for eye detail. Use strawberry strap for mouth. Arrange blue mini M&Ms evenly across body to represent spots.
Cut strawberry strap into pieces for pectoral fin, tail and fin markings. Press into buttercream. Decorate as shown.
