Fish and Coral Cake

For the cake: Make the vanilla sponge cake. Once cool, turn out from the tins and sandwich together using apricot jam as glue. Sit on an inverted cake tin ready for decoration.

To decorate: Divide the white fondant into six and roll into balls. Colour two balls with dots of orange food colouring and knead until blended. Roll out one orange ball of fondant to about 1 cm | 0.5" thickness on a work surface dusted with cornflour.

Brush the cake with jam. Drape the orange fondant over and smooth to an even finish. Trim the excess and reserve to shape into coral. Shape the other ball of orange fondant into a clown fish.

Dab two balls of white fondant with specks of grey colouring. Knead until uniform in colour and shape most of the ball into a castle. Use more jam to help secure the castle to the top of the cake. Use a paring knife to decorate the castle with detailing. Use the remaining grey fondant to manufacture rocks. Secure to the cake using more jam.

Shape one of the remaining balls of white fondant into a fish shape. Roll out the black fondant on a work surface dusted with cornflour to 0.5 cm | 0.25" thickness. Cut shapes from the icing to adhere to the white fish using jam. Cut thin strips of black fondant and stick to the clown fish. Use any excess white fondant to attach to the clown fish as per the image.

Colour the remaining fondant a variety of colours and shape into coral, starfish, shells, and underwater vegetation. Attach to the cake using jam. Position the fish on top of the cake.