Fannys Fish Cake

If, like me, you've forgotten to sort out a birthday cake for a special someone, Fanny has a solution. Of course. Even better of that special someone doesn't really like birthdays, or cake, but would of course be 'put out' if one didn't appear. Fanny recommends setting your little ones to work with this one, but I don't have any running around, so it's all up to me. Thankfully to make this spectacular centrepiece I just need a few things that are lying around that I can recycle. One of them being an old stale cake. Cake doesn't really last long enough round here to become stale, but I do have some of one of my Christmas cakes lurking about in a tin. Oh and a vintage copper fish mould that I recently snapped up at the local charity shop. Fanny would be proud of me. She paid a pretty penny for hers, but does note that there are many 'less expensive' ones that are avialable. I found one.

First job is to oil the mould very carefully with olive oil, but Fanny notes that it's VERY expensive so reminds me not to make a 'pond' just a thin skin brushed on very vigorously. Times have changed and I have a spray oil which I reckon will do the job perfectly.

Fanny tells me to use my 'very clean fingers' to crumble up the cake, add a few drops of fruit juice and squeeze it all up to a very firm paste. Oops, I think I added a little too much of the leftover Raspberry Coulis I found in the fridge - it is a recycled cake after all. My paste is quite squidgy as I try to press it into the oiled mould. 

Fanny says I should be able to simply turn it out now onto a flat dish, but the overload of Coulis means it looks stuck. I am deviating from Fannys technique here, and decide to bake the cake for a while, just to firm it up. I think I might've just been quicker whipping up a cake from scratch.

After just 15 minutes in the oven it looks ready to turn out and decorate. My deviation worked. Half a green glacé cherry becomes the eye, with Fanny noting that the other eye is underneath. Thanks for that Fanny. The scales are flaked almonds stuck into the naked cake. Mine are a bit haphazard, a bit childlike, but that seems appropriate. Fanny knows what you are thinking - what about the buttercream icing? Surely no cake is complete without it? Always ready with an alternative, Fanny insists that I make 'waves of a cold green sea' of icing surrounding the fish, naturally. So, ta-dah, Happy recycled Birthday!