How to Make a Fish-Fun Cake

My daughter's preschool teacher is so fun! She knows preschoolers well and knows what they like. So the last day of preschool (which was today) they had a cake walk. I know. Fun. Another example of her fun-ness: she always has them do this thing called the "Spanking Machine" for their birthdays. Madeline loves it and was looking forward to her birthday just to go through the Spanking Machine; I don't think it would fly in Seattle, but Rexburg is different.

On to the cake.

I am going to show you how to make this cake:

First steps:
Make two cakes, with blue dye...to make the cake blue...duh.
Let them cool.
Layer them with crumb layer....but first, let them crumble out of their pans and proceed to try to "glue" the layers and pieces together with frosting....stick in fridge overnight and pray that it will turn out the next morning....













only to wake up and open the fridge door to find this caketastrophy:





Yeah. It was bad. Heart breaking. It wasn't as bad as this picture--this was after I transferred it onto a cutting board so I could use the foil-covered cardboard "platter" I made for the new cake.
But yeah, this is a fairly good presentation of how it looked in the fridge. Sad.


Step Two:
After seeing the caketastrophy in the fridge, get dressed, brush hair, put a bit of make-up on and get preschooler to agree to get dressed quickly. (Okay, I suppose you could skip the make-up --I can't--but definitely get clothes on to go to the store. Unless you live in Seattle where people wear ugly pajamas to the store. Because they have no shame. Seriously, Seattle has won an "Ugliest City" award because of their liking for sloppy clothes and Birkenstock sandals with socks. True story, honest.)

Drive to store. In my case, Albertson's.

Talk to baker.

Ask for undecorated frozen sheet cake.

Wait for a few minutes while she gets it ready for you.

At home, cut it in half.

When you get a chance, toss out caketastrophy so you don't have to look at your failures...or be tempted to eat them.

(I don't even like cake. Brownies, yes. Pie, yes. Cookies, yes. Cake, no...well, unless it is a special dense, moist, chocolaty chocolate cake.)

Take picture of cake in garbage for post. Oh...wait, that was just what I did.
You don't have to do that.

Crumb layer on store-bought cake.

Place second cake on top and finish crumb layer.

Make sure to use blue dye (I use Martha Stewart's Gel for my dye) to give the frosting the illusion of water...

Start placing "fish" on cake.

The fish were made from starburst candies. And those sugar drops on paper, for the eyes. And some icing for stripes and such. And icing for the seaweed, too.

Have fun.