Under the Sea Cake and Cupcakes

This is Chase's first birthday cake that he got to mutilate. This was super fun to make, although I was up at 2:00 am trying to finish it Saturday night. I had to make way too many colors for this cake! This was a lot of work, but for those who have the right tips and know how to use them, this is definitely do-able!

For the cake, I used a 6" cake pan with two layers. Butter cream frosting, of course went on top. I covered it with blue loosely and tried to make it look like it had swirly waves on it, which is actually easier than trying to get it smooth anyway! Then I used graham cracker crumbs for the island. I also used just a little bit of white frosting on a knife and ran it lightly over some of the peaks of blue frosting to give it more of a wave look.

I used round and leaf tips for the sides of the cake for various things. For the seaweed, the leaf tip was used. For the coral, I used the round tip and piped circles, one on top of the other until it got as tall as I wanted it. I also used the round tips (various sizes) for all of the animals on the cake. Be careful as you try to pipe the turtles on the sand. They basically want to just come right up with the graham cracker crumbs.

And of course, I had to make cupcakes to go along with the cake for others to eat. I mostly just used the round tips for all of these as well. Only the shark used one other kind of tip (the rose petal) for the fin. Good luck!