Friday, September 09, 2011

Submission Cake

Andy submitted his PhD today.  Aside from giving Nacho a comfy perch from which to disapprove...

This milestone represents a great opportunity to make cake, and eat (and possibly drink a little, too).  But instead of just any cake, I somehow got the idea to make the cake in the shape of a butterflyfish, because that is the group of fishes he studied throughout his PhD.  Andy was totally sceptical that it would work, but I received encouragement via Facebook and the tea room at work.  So I forged ahead.

First, I traced the fish, Chaetodon plebeius, onto baking paper and then scanned it in and blew it up to pan-sized.

Then I used more baking paper to trace the shape and cut it out, to make my template.

The next step was to bake the cakes.  I decided to do two rectangle cakes, so the fish could be swimming in a blue ocean.

Once the cakes were cool, I "glued" my template down with a bit of icing, to keep it from moving around, and then cut around it to get the fish shape right.

A thin layer of blue icing on the bottom, then I put the fish-shaped cake on top and coated in yellow icing.

Some tidying up of icing (tip from watching my mum: a butter knife or finger dipped in water is the perfect way to get a smooth icing finish), and then adding on of details like stripes, a blue patch, and a fin.  All this was done before 10.30am, because I was super excited and couldn't wait!

Finally, I finished with the "black" (aka light brown and chocolate) stripe and spot, and used a little piece of strawberry for an eyeball.

A final tidy-up, and in the end we had to swap the strawberry (which was oozing juice and messing up the cake) for a dried cherry, but I'm pretty chuffed with the end result.

Congratulations, Andy!

12 comments:

Nadine said...

that is the awesomest cake I have ever seen! Congrats to you both :)

Cindy said...

Congratulations to Andy!

And to you, for pulling off that cake. :-)

Kari said...

Oh my gosh - congratulations! To Andy on such an exciting achievement, and to you for such a wonderful cake :)

Enjoy the celebrating!

Hannah said...

*fist pump* I'd like to think my encouragement was key here! :D

Congratulations Andy!

And not many sleeps now... :)

Mel said...

Wow, your cake is fantastic! I would feel a bit sad to cut it up after all that work. Congrats to Andy too!!!

Dee said...

Congrats to Andy! What a huge thing submission is. I know it is not "finished", but I figure when a student submits there should be bells rung in a central place and we should all come running to shake hands and break open the champers! The cake is suitable wonderful for marking the occasion.

Emma said...

Hooray!

Mihl said...

Congrats to Andy! What a great day! And what a great cake!

Get Skinny, Go Vegan. said...

Adorable! Congrats!

Kelly said...

How cute! Congrats to Andy. :)

Helena Marinho said...

Ow, you're soooo cute! *-*
I'm so in love with this cake!
♥♥♥

lisa dempster said...

Totally excellent cake! And well done to you!