Today is my darlings birthday, and as I've mentioned in previous posts he's a little obsessed with saltwater aquariums at the moment. For his birthday I registered him for dive classes so he can get scuba certified, and then made him this cake:
UPDATE: I never imagined the response I would get to this post. I am sincerely flattered. I had so much fun making this cake, and at the time I thought it looked a bit ghetto, but my husband loved it. I didn't take step by step pictures unfortunately, but I'll put a more comprehensive step by step to my process on here for those who want to try and make a similar (or much better) Aquarium cake.
1. I used a simple box cake to make the "cake" part of the cake and baked it in a 13 X 9 pan. I used store bought frosting too. Sorry, I'm just not cool enough to do that part from scratch.
2. The part I was really interested in was making the sugar glass. I used this
basic recipe. Don't despair if your first attempt at making sugar glass fails. I ended up making 4 batches before I got the thickness and size right. The trick with the sugar glass is to make sure you use a thermometer to get it to the right temp or it won't set properly. Also, use an incredibly flat surface to set it on, otherwise the glass will be warped and the sides won't fit together.
3. Once the molten glass was ready ( I used 2 drops of neon blue food colouring to get the right colour), I poured it into a teflon coated cookie sheet, that I had sprayed liberally with non-stick spray. The non stick spray can discolour the glass, so be warned. If I were to do it now, I'd probably just use crisco or coconut oil to grease my surface. You want the glass to be at least a 1/4 inch or about 7mm thick. It is extremely fragile, so you want it to be able to be thick enough to stand on its side. If you're worried about the thickness make it a little thicker, that was my rule of thumb.
4. I used a BBQ lighter over the top of the glass to bring the bubbles to the surface. Skim the flame lightly over the surface of the molten glass and the bubbles will rise to the surface and pop. Then let the glass set completely. Meaning, it should be completely cold to the touch before you try to remove it from the cookie sheet otherwise it will warp.
5. To get the smaller sides of the aquarium to fit, I measured the side of the cake, including a little extra width for the thickness of the other two sides of glass I wanted it to rest against. I folded a piece of foil over multiple times to create a barrier, wedged it in the cookie sheet and essentially just made myself a smaller cookie sheet with it. Another way to get smaller sides is to just use a smaller cookie sheet and cut your cake to size.
6. I frosted the sheet cake before putting the glass together. Placing the sides around the cake was a beast, and I needed help to hold them in place. I frosted the edges of the glass and kind of just stuck them together. I loosely tied a piece of thread around the top and bottom of the glass to hold it together while the frosting hardened.
7. Once I had my sides in place, I added the decorations. I used 4 mini Twix bars stacked on top of one another to make the treasure chest, green Twizzlers for the plants. Without some reinforcement, the Twizzlers will fall over. I had some florist wire at home that I threaded through the center of the Twizzlers and then bent the wire to create the shape of the plants. For the pebbles I used Almond Joy bites because they are my husband's favourites. I then tied thread through some Swedish Fish at different lengths and tied them onto a piece of overhead projector transparency. I simply suspended the transparency over the glass to create the effect of the fish swimming.
8. My glass panels didn't come together perfectly. I had a little bit of a gap at the top. To fix that problem I found a piece of black construction paper which I folded and then taped around the top of the glass to create the black rim of the aquarium. Then, I frosted Twizzlers around the bottom of the aquarium to hide a few other flaws. And, voila, one aquarium cake.
One warning: Depending on the humidity of the area you live in, the sugar glass will warp or sag if you leave it over night. So, I suggest leaving your glass panels on a flat surface and only assembling everything an hour or two before you want to display your cake.
Good Luck!!! My favourite part of this cake was smashing the sides over a friends head once the cake had been eaten!! Such FUN!!!
( I completely admit that I didn't make the cake entirely on my own. I needed Mack's help getting the glass sides up. Also, after I broke the first couple of sugar glass panels, Mack made some more for me because I was completely fed up. Thanks Honey for helping with your own birthday cake.)
