I made my 2nd sculpted/3D cake and I'm so happy with it! This was made for my nephew who's turning 12 and loves to fish and said that he "was put on this earth to fish." He also just joined a junior bass fishing club. The fish itself is rice krispie treats and then covered in the MMF and then detailed and hand painted. The cake is strawberry, his favorite, with buttercream. I made the cattails from gum paste. I also made some lures, sinkers and bobbers and put them on cupcakes as decoration.

This is an instructable on how I made it. :)

Step 1: Mold the Rice Krispie Treats

First I made a double batch of Rice Krispie treats. I just used the recipe on the box, but you can find it here: http://ricekrispies.com/#/recipes/the-original-treats

With a light coating of Crisco on my hands I molded the treats around dowels in the shapes of the 2 parts of the fish.

Step 2: Covering the Pieces With Fondant

Next I made a double batch of marshmallow fondant. The recipe can be found here:
http://www.wilton.com/forums/messageview.cfm?catid=7&threadid=137541&FTVAR_MSGDBTABLE=

Then I rolled out the fondant and covered the treat shapes with it.

I then used my fingers and some plastic clay tools to do all the detailing and sculpting.

Step 3: Making the Fins

I made then made the fins out of some of the fondant and textured them using the tools. I draped some of the pieces over or up against rolled up paper so that they would dry in the shapes/curves that I wanted.

Step 4: Painting the Fish

I painted the large fish parts and the fins separate and then attached the fins with a little bit of water and the help of some toothpicks.

I used Wilton gel colors mixed with vodka for the painting. I layered it up in several steps. First was a light greenish brown, then a couple light washes of a green with a little brown mixed in. Then I added the darker geen "spots" and finally a little light pink with a touch of gray in and around the mouth.

Step 5: Make Cattails and Grass Out of Gum Paste

I forgot to take photos of making the cattails and grass but I have a photo of them drying. I hung them off of a light fixture to dry. :)

What I did was wrap heavy wire in green floral tape and then mold the brown part out of gum paste and slide it on. For the grass I cut out a long strip of gum paste, laid the floral wire down and then folded the gum paste strip over the wire.

Once they were dry I painted them with the gel color/vodka mixes.

Step 6: Make the Cake Mix

I used a box mix for the cake (strawberry) in a quarter sheet pan. To make the cake a little more dense to hold up to the weight of the fish I used the WASC (white almond sour cream) additions & instructions to make the cake.

They can be found here:
http://cakecentral.com/recipes/7445/the-original-wasc-cake-recipe

Once the cake was cooled I attached it to my foil-covered board with some buttercream icing.

Next I positioned the fish where I wanted it to be on the cake, marked the area, then removed the fish. I scooped out a little bit of cake in the areas so that the fish parts would be inset of the cake a little. I used thick straws (cut down to the height of the cake) as supports where I was to put the fish parts.

Then I piped some icing in the area and put the fish parts back in place.

The recipe I use for the icing is below:

2 cups Crisco
2 lb bag of powdered sugar
4 tbsp meringue powder
2 tsp clear vanilla extract/flavor
2 tsp clear butter flavor
1 tsp clear almond extract/flavor
1/2 tsp salt
Water

Sift the powdered sugar and meringue powder together into a bowl.

In a small bowl or a measuring cup, put in all the flavorings/extracts and then add to that enough water to make the mix 1/2 cup. Add in the salt and stir until the salt is dissolved.

In the mixer bowl put the Crisco and water/extract mix. Beat on a medium-low speed for about 40 seconds, to just get it started mixing.

Next slowly start adding in your powdered sugar/meringue mix while mixing. Once it's all in there, mix on that same slow speed for about a minute.

Then just color the icing however you want. I used a little green, lots of royal blue and a little black.

Step 7: Pipe in the Water

I piped in the water with the buttercream icing using petal tip #104. I started up against the fish parts and just kept going around and around and around.

Step 8: Finish the Cake!

Once the water was all done I added in the cattails and grass, adding some extra piping around them to help stabilize them.

And then it's done! :)

Step 9: Fishing Tackle Cupcakes

Adding this little part on.

I made some lures, sinkers and bobbers out of gum paste and hand painted them. When I made the cake I made some cupcakes. I piped the icing on them the same way I did the water on the cake, starting with the outer edge of the cupcakes. Then I placed the various fishing tackle on top as decorations.

Just showing a few various photos of the making of the tackle and the finished cupcakes.