This year, my newly 5 year old, Willow opted for a Mermaid themed party! After I convinced her that she couldn't have a Unicorn theme two years in a row that is! She had never had a BIG party before, so this was her year. We made it a joint party with one of her close friends, hired a hall, invited their whole kinder class and more and had games, craft activities the whole lot!

Sharing a party with another family is great, sharing the party work load worked out so well for us! I volunteered myself to take on the task of the cakes! Because I secretly love stressing myself out about making them perfect and spending half the day in the kitchen!

But, actually these cakes were relatively simple and looked really cute! I probably would have made it even easier for myself if I had some of the proper baking utensils, like one of those handy metal scrapers for the butter cream, but hey.. it worked!

For the cakes, I used the same recipe I always use, the simple yet effective Butter Cake recipe from Taste.com.au , always a hit! Basically, this recipe makes 1 cake layer in an 8 inch or 9 inch cake pan.

For the butter cream, its a mixture between guessing and reading too many recipes, I still haven't perfected the butter-cream, it is next on my to do list! If anyone has a fail proof recipe hit me up! But, this time what I did do right was to invest in some gorgeous gel colours for the butter cream, rather than trying to create something from the basic supermarket colouring. I used Ameri-color Violet and Dusty Rose and they both turned out gorgeous!

My favourite part of this cake though was making the little fondant Mermaid Tails. I haven't used fondant much before, mostly because I don't like the taste of it and I've been a little worried it wouldn't work out. But, I am here to let you know its actually pretty easy! Especially if you are good a playing with play-doh! I purchased the silicone tail mould/mold from Ebay. The tails were really just a matter of rolling the fondant around in my hands until it got warm and therefore soft enough to mold. I experimented with the two colours mixing them together before and after they were in the mold, and ended up with a range of cute colour combos. After ensuring they were pressed down enough in the mold, and removing excess fondant from the top and around the edges I peeled them out, and gently stuck the skewers almost all the way to the end and left them to harden. Here is a great You Tube tutorial that I watched before making them : How to make fondant mermaid tails

I then pulled out this champagne coloured edible shimmer I had purchased, and brushed it onto the tails with one of the kids unused paint brushes! And WHAT a massive difference it made, they became all shimmery and gorgeous! You can see the before and after shimmer pictures below!