fishing boat BIRTHDAY cake cincinnati

birthday cakes cincinnati - fishing boat sculpted cake

Fishing Boat Birthday Cake

We are always up to the challenge and love to please our clients with all sort of creative ideas. This time we were asked to create a replica of our client's fishing boat to celebrate his 60th birthday!
To add to the challenge, this cake had to be designed to travel because our client planned to transport it out of state!

We started by decorating a double masonite board with textured chocolate to simulate water and some cute fish that were wet painted with luster dusts. Our original idea was to layer melted isomalt to the hardened chocolate to create a cool water effect, but were worried about the weight that this would add and its reaction to humidity and temperature changes!. After some serious consideration, I decided to replace the melted sugar by a thin layer of confectioners glaze that would provide shine without the weight!

This cake has the most moist fine crumb ever!

Our marbled cake is so delicious! It is a perfect moist hybrid of a pound cake and a sponge cake, with a fine crumb. This recipe is perfect for sculpting!

We started by baking a 18x15 sheet cake that was split in two layers and then cut lengthwise to layer between chocolate ganache and vanilla bean mouseline (Italian Buttercream).
The sculpting of the cake was quite straightforward, because the boat shape isn't difficult to replicate.
Once it was sculpted, it was iced with a generous layer of our chocolate truffle ganache, and then finished with a thin layer of our super delicious custom made rolled chocolate (never fondant)

18x15 Marbled cake for the cake layers. They were sliced in half and then cut length wise, to achieve a 4 layer look of the cake.

Sculpted boat shape created from our marbled sponge. Everything is made out of cake, except for the boat's bridge.

Ganached cake covered with chocolate

The majority of the times, we ice our cakes with a rich layer of buttercream prior to ice them with our custom made rolled chocolate, but this time, we ganached our cake!
The beauty of ganache is that it sets quickly and provide lots of strength to the icing...and is SO delicious!
Covering the cake with rolled chocolate was very straightforward; on the other hand, all the trimming and decorations seemed to take foreveeeeeeeeeeeer!!!
Since this was our first boat, I had to create  a couple to templates to use as reference for some basic pieces. This is such an important step. This may seem like extra work and steps, but It's the only way to guarantee good proportions and scale!

Fishing Boat templates and skewers to build the structure of the boat's bridge

We were thrilled to have the opportunity to make another special cake for our client and are honored to have had a small piece on this special day:)