I can remember the first time I saw this movie, I watched 5 minutes of it and already I was drowning in tears. I should have known by the title of the movie that I would be an emotional wreck. I turned to my boyfriend and said "WHY DID YOU HAVE ME WATCH THIS!?" It ended up being a great movie but the first 5 minutes of Pixar movies always get me chocked up.
Lets start by fishing out the supplies you'll need to make your Nemo's!
- 1 Box Cake/1 cake recipe (This will make roughly 24 Nemo's)
- 1 Ready-made icing/1 icing recipe
- Orange candy melts
- White sixlets
- Black, white & red cocoa butter (or edible markers)
- Black edible luster dust
- Lolly pop sticks
- Parchment paper
Start by baking your cake as directed in recipe, be sure to line your pan with parchment paper so you can get out every last crumb of cake. Once cake is made let it cool completely by pulling the cake from the pan and resting it on wire racks. Crumble cake into a large bowl and add icing in small increments. You want the consistency to be easy enough to mold, but not sticky to the touch. If the cake starts to crumble as you are trying to mold it, add a little icing at a time.
Once you have the right consistency of cake begin molding cake into an egg shape (as shown above). Press into the center of the face two white sixlets. Then remove the eyes, so you are left with a hollow circle where the eyes are going to rest when he dip the cake into the candy melts.
Place Nemo heads onto a baking sheet and put them into the freezer for AT LEAST 1 hour! Once you have done that you can start by melting the orange candy melts into a heat safe bowl. Dip one end of the lolly pop stick into the candy melt and press into the bottom of Nemo's head. Set aside and repeat this step until all your Nemos are well supported before submerging them into the orange candy melt.
Step 1: Start by dipping your Nemo head into the Orange candy melt. Before the candy hardens press white sixlets into the hollow circles.
Step 2: Take your Red cocoa butter/red edible marker and draw small circles in the center of the white sixlets.
Step 3: Paint/draw a thin black line around Nemo's face. As shown below
Step 4: Use a paint brush to add shadows around Nemo's face with the black luster powder. This is where what seemed to be an easy cake pop gets complicated. I've been doing this for years, so what seems easy to me may not be easy to level 1 cake pop makers, and for that I'm sorry! You could probably even skip the shadowing step if you wanted to, it will still look like Nemo in the end! Hopefully this next picture with the shadows around Nemo's face will do some justice!
As you can see with the shadowing, I went a little heavier on the black luster powder around the eyes. The luster powder goes a long way, so go easy on it. If you don't you'll just end up with lines instead of shadows.
Step 5 & 6- These next few steps are just adding a few little details to the face to make it pop! Step 5, add one small black dot to center red dot of each eye. Then give Nemo a big ol' smile! Step 6, add another black ring around Nemo's body. Let dry.
Step 7 & 8- Same idea, we're just going to add a few little details. Step 7, using white cocoa butter (I don't know if they have white edible markers) paint in between the two black lines. Step 8, add one tiny white dot inside each black dot of the eye. And add a small white line inside his adorable black smile, he needs teeth!
Step 9- You can do this next step 1 of 2 ways. We need to make Nemo's fins. Some people may find it easier to just use orange fondant and form a few that way, however if I can find a way to not use fondant I will. But that's only because I don't particularly like the taste of it. So what did in this step was melt down some of the orange candy. I filled a pastry bag with the candy and piped a few fins out onto some parchment paper. You can also use a toothpick and dab it out that way. These fins don't need to be identical. Mine don't resemble Nemo's in the movie by any means. Once the fins have dried onto the parchment paper, carefully peel them off. Use the melted candy melt to "glue" them into place.
Step 10- Now if you remember in the movie Nemo had one little fin and one over-sized fin. Use some of the melted orange candy melt to again "glue" the fins onto the side of Nemo's body.
Step 11- You can really end at 10 if you want to, but I went paint crazy. I added another black and white stripe, and a little more black and white detail around the body.
Looks like Nemo was lost and found, but in your kitchen! Please be sure to follow me on Instagram (batterup_cupcake) and Twitter (@CupcakeBatterup) to see what I have going on. Much love xo
