Finding Nemo Cake

The love of a parent and close friends would go to the ends of the earth. Finding Nemo cake is the expression of love. Marlin lives in his anemones with his son Nemo in their marine habitat. They live there for safety in the little tentacles. But once Nemo is in need of rescue, Marlin sets off on the adventure of his lifetime. That is just like raising a child. It is a wild ride of fun and adventure. Your Finding Nemo inspired party and cake can be just that. An adventure into the unknown. Or if you wish to simply change the colors you can create a calming fish of relaxation. The design and icing techniques can be interchanged by just simply changing the color scheme.

For my son Anthony’s 2nd birthday party we hosted a Nemo Party. He was in a stage where he loved the color orange and fish. The movie was watched many times in our household. We came up with tons of fun little games and then decorated the house. It looked amazing. There were helium mylar fish balloons. They were a mixture of fish and a shark. We also had streamers twisted and then hanging from the walls and ceiling to look like seaweed.

How to Make the Ultimate Nemo Cake

I made a Nemo Birthday Cake for the birthday party. I used a Nemo birthday cake pan template and made a chocolate cake. I used a regular cake mix and followed the baking instructions on the baking pan. I baked it at 350 degrees for 30 to 40 minutes. I then checked to see if it was cooked by poking it with a toothpick. I let it cool until the sided of the cake pulled away from the cake pan naturally. Then I leveled the cake and flipped it onto a cooling rack.

The Wilton Cake Pan left indents for where I needed to fill in the different types and colors of icing (black, orange and white). I made up all the different icing and colors that were needed. Don’t worry if you make too much icing because it will keep in your freezer or refrigerator. I mix the icing in a small to medium sized mixing bowl. Then I use a soft spatula and scoop it into icing bags. I use vanilla or buttercream for the white and orange color base, but I always use chocolate icing for the black icing. This way you don’t need to add in as much black dye to change the color. This makes it easy to store all the different colors together in tupperware containers. It keeps well in the refrigerator and then with the lid on the container you are able to store other items around it easily.

I used only two icing tips to create this design. I used tip number three and tip number sixteen. I used the round Wilton icing tip #3 to make Nemo’s eye. In a dish beside me I made a mixture that consisted of cornstarch and warm water. The mixture when applied with your finger will smooth out any icing. I used this on Nemo’s eye to make it look smooth and more realistic. I did this twice, once when it was just the with part of the eye and again after I had added the black portion. I used the round number three tip to add the black to the eye (then did the cornstarch smoothing) and I also used the same tip to outline the mouth and fin. I then switched to the tip number sixteen. Tip sixteen helps to form a star design. There are a couple ways to use this tip, but for this cake I squeeze the icing bag close to the cake. Keep the tip in the same place and stop squeezing the icing when you get the star to your desired size. I used the Wilton icing tip number sixteen to make the rest of the Nemo birthday cake. I did the stripes like rows so they would all fit in order. I did little dots as a guideline for my colors of stripes that I wanted to add.

Remember that you can easily change up the colors of icing to create the look of any tropical fish. This could totally change the mood of your party to being calm, spa like relaxation style of a party.

Another neat idea would be to have other fish in all the beautiful colors of the rainbow around the Nemo cake. This can be done with cookies, cake pops or cupcakes. It would add a pop of color and add more dimension to the dessert table.

I was thrilled that the cake looked just like Nemo! The only thing that I would change for next time would be to make the end of the tail orange because there was a lot of black icing and it looked really dark. The Finding Nemo birthday cake tasted and looked fantastic!