Catfish Cake

This cake was a special one for my oldest recipient, Justin's grandfather's 80th birthday. The man was and is an avid trotline fisherman and has caught many a catfish in his lifetime (not to mention squirrel camp and other hunting stories). So when the time came to decide on what cake to make for Papaw, it was naturally going to be a catfish. That being said, there are different types of catfish and the ones in the Red River, are a particular shade, my husband told me, so I had to receive some schooling. 

The Red River catfish is kind of yellow brown with highlights, bit mouth, etc. So I began with about  5 cakes, half chocolate, half vanilla, iced with chocolate frosting and buttercream. Hand carved the form, then covered in fondant. The fun part was the air brush painting, though setting up the booth and clean up are my least favorite! (We use a food color based 'paint' of course, and you can see my cute little compressor in the background.) The fish is in the details of course, fins, whiskers, all that jazz. 

The really cool part is that my mother in law found a picture of Papaw with a really nice catch and the fish in the photo looked exactly like my cake (look on the wall)! Mission accomplished. All his friends and family really enjoyed the cake, both visually and textually, and I was a happy to make it an extra special day for an extra special grandpa.