Last weekend was the kid’s birthday party. I asked her what kind of party she wanted and she said “surprise me!”.

I went with “Under the Sea” and basically started the preparations a month ago with googling ideas, ordering moulds and fossilised shark teeth, trying out recipes and watching videos for inspiration.

The results were:

Ocean macarons

Sadly the colours didn’t bake too well. The purple ones are filled with lavender buttercream, the blue ones with white chocolate buttercream.

The seashells are white chocolate with a bit of cocoa powder. I must say the silicone moulds worked perfectly.

Next are the sea foam cupcakes, on a pumpkin muffin basis:

The topping is marshmallow fluff: Lightly caramelised sugar poured into beaten egg whites, like for an Italian meringue. I then added some gelatine for stability. Tails and fins are fondant.

The sand is grounded almonds

And last but nor least, the cake:

This is what it looked liked before being frosted. I baked the cake on Thursday and needed to get it layered and frosted on Friday, and that day, everything went wrong. The fillings are on a cream cheese, whipped cream and fruit basis with gelatine, but despite stirring in the gelatine as you should, it became lumpy. In the end, the lower filling was still lumpy, but you didn’t notice when you ate it. The lower filling is with fresh pomegranate seeds and I can only recommend that. They are delightfully sweet and sour and add texture. The top filling is blueberries, which are a safe bet for taste.

Also my muffin batter separated and when frosting more shit happened, but in the end it went well. I frosted it with Italian meringue buttercream and let it cool over night. In the morning I popped it into the freezer for a few hours to prepare it for the mirror glaze.

This time the sand is brown sugar. I had already made the mermaid tails the night before, though I should have made them earlier to let them dry out more. Then I made corals by pouring caramelised and coloured sugar over ice cubes. This worked hmpf but ok. My cups were too small, my ice cubes not the right shape and the sugar started to crystallize again, but I got a few suitable pieces. I added those and more chocolate sea shells and this is the result: