Coolest Swimming Pool Cake 34
by Cheryl T.
(Brentwood UK)
Homemade Swimming Pool Cake
I made this swimming pool cake for our twin nieces who are competitive club swimmers and represent their area in the country.
Its made of 3 8" square cakes, two side by side with the third cut in half and butted alongside the two others. The cake should then measure approx 16" x 12".
I then filled the cake with blue buttercream and strawberry jam. Measuring a 2" border all the way round I then cut out the indentation for the pool, only approx 1" deep. (You don't want to cut in too far otherwise you'll interfere with the filling). Score the cake with a knife in the 'pool' area to ensure the cake can be lifted out easily - know you have the 'empty pool'!
I then coated the entire cake in apricot jam and used 1kg of white fondant icing, rolled out to cover the cake entirely. Ensuring the the pool indentation remains.
A week prior to making this cake I cut each tile individually using a small 1cm square cutter from rolled white fondant. To cover this size cake used approx 800 tiles. This, needless to say was somewhat time consuming and perhaps a little crazy!
The edge of the pool was covered in 'aqua' coloured tiles and glazed with confectioners glaze to achieve a 'wet' look. All tiles were fixed into position using royal icing.
I coloured several tiles blue and cut them smaller so that I could incorporate our nieces names into the tiling of the pool. One side says 'Happy 15th' and the other side stated their names. I thought this was a nice original way of including the birthday message - if again time consuming!
Once the cake had been tiled I then filled the edges with fondant to give a neater appearance.
Colouring some royal icing blue I then poured this into the pool indentation - before it sets make sure you have your lane ropes ready to put in!
The lane ropes were made from 'candy' necklaces, I selected the colours needed and re-threaded them onto string with each end secured into the cake into position using cocktail sticks.
You don't want to add the lane ropes after the 'water' has set as it will crack the surface.
The swimmers were little plastic models that I painted in different colours using acrylic paint. They were then set into fondant icing on the 'blocks' 4 'blocks' were made in total for the four lanes each measuring 2" in width.
I modelled the pool steps and handrail from fondant, also the sports bags, towels, flip-flops, life-ring, and kick-board floats and coloured where needed using food colouring and small brush.
Using blue tinted piping-gel I then poured onto the surface of the water and using a brush spread over it's entirety. This made the water look wet.
Finally, the whole cake was the given one coat of confectioners glaze.
The girls loved it! If you make one like this make sure you've got plenty of time on your hands!
