3D Nemo Cake

We baked this 3D Nemo Cake for our niece's 3rd birthday:

FINDING & MAKING NEMO

To make Nemo, we baked 3 large 11" square cakes and stacked them on top of each other and put a layer of vanilla buttercream in between each layer. After that, we carved the cake such that it would resemble Nemo's body as much as possible (using a reference picture really helps!)

After that, we covered Nemo with orange fondant (the colouring we used was Red Man Orange Colour Paste & we're pretty happy with the orange, very Nemo-y) and placed white strips of fondant for Nemo's markings. We mixed black food colouring with a little bit of Vodka (the Vodka will evaporate once the food colouring dries) and painted on the black details. To enhance Nemo's chubbbby cheeks, we created a slight impression on the areas where Nemo's eyes would be. 

MAKING THE FINS 

We made a total of 5 fins and used gumpaste for the main orange parts and added white fondant to the edges. You can use gumpaste for the whole fin if you like, it's just that we had extra white fondant (Also, we found that it is easier to stick fondant to gumpaste, rather than to stick gumpaste together). 

Tip: When we were placing the large tail on Nemo, we waited till the gumpaste had hardened a little (but not too hard, otherwise it will be difficult to shape the tail) and once we were satisfied with how it looked, we supported both sides with cans & cups to help the tail stay upright while it hardened. 

MAKING NEMO'S EYES

We made Nemo's eyes by placing a piece of round black fondant (that we went over with a layer of black food colouring x Vodka) on top of a slightly larger piece of round orange fondant. Dalia then drew out the larger white shape on a piece of paper and used that as a template to cut the eyes out. Finish the eyes off with a little white spot at the corner of each eye.

To make the water, we used clear piping jelly and coloured it with Red Man Sky Blue Concentrated Creme (we prefer this over the liquid colouring) to get a nice deep blue. 

We added colourful corals and seaweeds and cut Alex's name such that it looked like the Finding Nemo logo. It's the little details that really make the cake!

Tip: We placed two dowel rods (one close to the head, and the other towards the back) to ensure that the cakes didn't slide.