Trust the Process

Designing a birthday cake for a party is usually joyful. Designing one for a two-year-old who adores every creature in the ocean, while feeding sixty guests at the same time, is another matter entirely.

I’ve made plenty of sea-themed cakes before. There was the mermaid cake we once created with macaron oysters and shimmering tails (now known as our Fantasy Mermaid cake), and pirate treasure scenes inspired by the Treasure Island cake. But this brief was different. My friend’s daughter wasn’t fixated on mermaids or pirates.

She loved everything in the sea.

Octopus. Turtles. Stingrays. Clownfish. The lot.

And the cake had to feed sixty people.

The Problem With Feeding Sixty People Cake

A towering three-tier cake would cover the portions easily. But tall cakes hide most of their decoration between tiers. If you want to build a proper underwater world, you need space.

Wide space.

I also had no interest in scattering neat fondant fish cut-outs around the sides. That approach always looks slightly supermarket. Perfectly tidy perhaps, but oddly lifeless.

So instead of starting with the cake structure, I began with the sea creatures.

The octopus came first, with eight curling tentacles spreading across the board. Each tiny white sucker was rolled by hand and pressed into place one by one. Then came a small clownfish family inspired by a certain orange fish beloved by toddlers everywhere. A turtle followed, and finally two stingrays gliding quietly across the reef.

The stingrays were my favourites. Something about their gentle shape gave the whole scene a calm elegance.

I had originally planned chocolate praline seashells too, but a few nut allergies among the children quickly changed that idea. Sometimes cake design is as much about restraint as imagination.

A Different Way to Build the Cake

The bigger puzzle remained the structure.

I kept thinking about a cake I’d made for my son Xavier’s third birthday, inspired by this Hungry Caterpillar cake. Instead of stacking tiers vertically, the cakes were spread across the board like a miniature landscape.

The idea works surprisingly well when you need both decoration and portions. Several cakes together feed the same crowd as a tall tiered cake, but every surface remains visible.

For this design I baked chocolate, lemon, vanilla and even a cheerful rainbow cake in sizes ranging from four to eight inches.

One became a two-tier six-and-eight-inch stack. Another was a tall six-inch cake. A small four-inch cake completed the arrangement.

Together they would feed sixty people while leaving room for the reef to grow around them.

The Moment the Knife Appeared

And yet when everything was assembled, something felt wrong.

The cakes looked crowded. Slightly stiff.

Too polite.

I stared at the board for a while before picking up a knife.

Not recklessly, of course. Sixty people still needed cake. But by shaving small slopes into the sponge and carving gentle valleys between the cakes, the arrangement slowly began to loosen.

The separate cakes started to feel like a landscape.

A coral reef.

I should clarify that I do not normally reach for a knife when stressed.

It is remarkable how often cake design becomes easier once the structure feels right. Decoration works best when it enhances a shape rather than hiding it.

Building the Coral Reef

With the landscape finally behaving itself, colour came next.

I mixed coral shades of pink, orange and yellow alongside ocean blues, greens and soft purples. Piping bags began multiplying across the kitchen. Bowls. Spatulas. Spoons.

Anyone who knows how much I dislike washing up will understand the magnitude of this sacrifice.

The piping began cautiously, then gathered confidence.

Buttercream ridges grew into coral fans. Different nozzles created reef textures. Colours layered over one another until the cakes started to resemble something living.

Real reefs are wonderfully chaotic. Slightly uneven piping actually made the illusion stronger.

Biscuit crumbs scattered across the board became sand. Strands of green buttercream seagrass curled through the coral.

Suddenly the whole thing felt alive.

When the Ocean Finally Appeared

For a moment I considered leaving the reef as it was.

But once the creatures returned to the board the scene transformed entirely. The octopus settled into the coral. The stingrays glided across the reef. The clownfish appeared between the buttercream fans.

The cake stopped looking like decoration.

It became a tiny underwater world.

The fondant shells quietly disappeared along the way. There simply wasn’t space anymore.

Sometimes good cake design is about knowing what to leave out.

By the time the final stingray settled into place, the board looked like a reef in miniature.

The panic dissolved.

Somewhere between carving sponge and piping coral, the cake had finally found its shape.

I slept for ten hours straight after delivering it.

This is exactly why we only take on a handful of bespoke cakes each year. Designs like this are exhausting, slightly terrifying, and completely magical when they finally work.

If you're planning a celebration soon, you can explore our full collection of cakes available for delivery across London and Surrey.

Sometimes the only thing to do is trust the process.

Lots of love,
Reshmi