Turnip the Vegimal

 

 

My niece Sydney was turning 2 and loved the Octonauts! I decided to make her a fun under the sea cake. I made of a very rough draft of how I wanted the cake to look. I think the Octonauts are just the cutest and I was excited to make them.

 

I made Turnip the Vegimal out of Satin Ice pure gum paste. I modelled the figurine with my fingers and stuck all his appendages on with water and small paint brush. I let him dry over night so he would hold his shape on the cake.

 

 Here, using gum paste I made a bunch of different types of decorations. Using a 5 stem flower cutter I made star fish, I rolled the gum paste out quite thick so that the star fish would look more realistic. I then added little indents to the star fish using a little pin to give it some character. I also made mini oysters and put a tiny pearl dragee inside of it. I made mini coral pieces in pink, and purple. To make the ruffled effect, I pinched the bottom of a small piece of gum paste.

And of course last but not least I made Captain Barnicle Bear and Kwazii Cat.

 

My favourite one of them all to make was Professor Inkling Octopus.

 

  

 I added a light crumb coat to both cake tiers. I put them in the fridge for about 3 hours to make sure the butter had harden and the cakes would be easy to work it. Once they were ready I stuck the 8" tier to the cake board with frosting. Then I added dowels to the 8" cake so that it would support the weight of the 6" cake. After the cakes were secured and stacked, I tinted the vanilla frosting blue and made sure that I didn't completely mix the color. I wanted it to look like waves with some parts being lighter and darker than others.
 

 

 Using my offset spatula and my mini palette knife I created the wave look on the cake.

 

 

Once that was complete and the frosting was still at room temperature I added all of the decorations I made earlier to the cake. On the cake board I added brown sugar to give it a sandy look. The decorations stuck nicely to cake without any sort of glue. I tried to make the cake look full of aquatic life with a bustling under the sea feel.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Over all I was very pleased with this cake. And Sydney just loved it!
 

 

 

After my niece's birthday party was over, I found an Octonauts massacre! Sad but true, at least these little guys made a lot of children very happy. They lived their life with purpose.