Tesha asked if I'd make a cake for L's "Little Mermaid" birthday party - I googled for inspiration ideas and hadn't settled on what exactly I wanted to do...maybe rubber figures, or bubbles, ombre...and then I saw mermaid scales and loved it. Most of the inspo pics used fondant for the scales but I'm not a fondant fan - it's how cake decorators get the super professional look (you color the fondant, roll it out and cut shapes or form it into 3D shapes) but it just doesn't taste good. I saw a couple that did it with buttercream frosting which doesn't look as sharp but I knew would taste better - so I went with not as professional but pretty enough, and tastes good too!
For the cake: I baked 2 boxes of white cake mix in (4) 8" pans. I did doctor the mix like I usually do - add a teaspoon of vanilla, a pinch of coarse salt, an extra egg, a box of dry vanilla pudding, substituted melted butter for oil, and this time I replaced most of the water with pina colada mix. Bake according to package directions. Cool completely. Note: I used 3 of the 4 layers for this cake because I wanted the cake tall enough to have more rows of scales. I'll show you tomorrow what I did with the extra layer :)
For the decorating: I made 4 batches of my standard buttercream frosting to make sure I had enough. Before coloring all of the frosting I scooped out what I thought would be enough to color medium turquoise to fill the cake, frost the top, and do a light coat around the sides. Once I frosted the basic cake and knew I had enough of that color, then I divided the rest into 6 bowls and colored them dark turquoise, medium turquoise, light turquoise/pale green, light purple, light pink, and left one white in case I ran out of one of the colors and needed to color more. Put each color except white into decorator bags fitted with a round tip.
To make the scales: starting with the dark turquoise, pipe large dots around the bottom; using the tip of a rounded cake decorating spatula knife draw the top of the dot up creating a 'scale' shape. Repeat all the way around, then add the next row of dots offsetting between two of the first row scales - look at the pics to see what I mean. I guess you could make the dots right above the previous row but I liked how they look offset. The bottom row is all using the darkest shade, for the second row I did a few of the dark and then finished with the medium turquoise and one dot of purple. Continue adding dots and making them into scales, changing colors as you make new rows. When I got to the last row at the top edge of the cake I didn't know how to finish it, the top scales looked kind of messy and unfinished so I piped a thick wavy border on the top of the cake.
Because I had it on hand, I added edible glitter to the sides - you couldn't really see it tho and I don't think it made much difference. Then I added candy balls in different shapes to the sides here and there.
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