Under the Sea Carrot Cake

When I was little my favorite movie beyond any doubt was The Little Mermaid. The only Disney Princess with red hair who spent most of her time swimming and dreaming. Even now, if I stumble upon The Little Mermaid on TV it's very likely that I will sit and watch it to the end no matter which part I came in at.

That all being said, Ariel was not my inspiration behind this cake. It was a bouquet of flowers with some fuzzy sea-foam green fronds that I tried to mold out of gumpaste that ended up looking nothing like fronds and everything like wavy coral. That combined with daisies that looked like lotus flowers and these bizarre "fantasy flowers" that look like they belong on Finding Nemo made me change the whole direction of this cake from "bright and elegant" to "under the sea flowery-coral-reef-thing". I think it works for me though.


Interesting fact about the marbled blue fondant: I MADE IT FROM SCRATCH!

I think that fondant is one of those things where you go into it a naive little girl and come out a man. Or maybe not a man... just less of a naive little girl. After an hour strait of kneading and twisting and manipulating that impossibly solid dough, my arms were screaming for mercy and I had beads of sweat rolling down my back (gross, I know, but you asked!), BUT the fondant was delicious. There was no trace of that weird chemical taste that lurks around store bought fondant, just a (very) sweet vanilla with a hint of almond.

Underneath the gumpaste flowers and fronds/coral, the fondant coating, the pink ribbon (that, I will admit, needs a bit of work), and the sparkling shimmer dust that I sprinkled liberally over the whole cake because what’s a cake without sparkles, was the best carrot cake I have ever had layered with the strangest whipped buttercream I have ever made. The cake came from a new book all about organic baking, and while not all the ingredients I used were organic, I will say that this cake exceeded all expectations and made me want to try more organic ingredients in the future. But I think that in itself will be a post for the future. In the meantime I will leave you with this: Making fondant is labour intensive, but definitely worth it; everything in life comes right back to Disney (or at least that’s what I tell myself); and organic carrot cake is seriously ballin’.