Mom's 49th Birthday Koi Pond Cake

Happy birthday, Mom! Well, actually this picture was taken back when it really was her birthday, as shown in the picture above. My brother and I had been planning her cake early in 2011, because she pointed out to us that on her birthday the year prior (2010) we forgot to get her a cake. So last year we wanted to go all out. Honestly though, we forgot all about it until Veteran's Day, a couple weeks before her birthday. I knew I wanted a koi pond cake, because my mom has two koi ponds with a total of 28 fish (all Japanese koi except for one comet). And yes, each has its own unique name.

 This is the pond in our back yard next to the deck. When you step outside it's its own tranquil paradise with a waterfall and beautiful koi. Some of them are even tame enough to eat out of your hand!

Here are the koi from our front yard pond. The larger black and white fish on the right is Domino, the largest in the pond. He and is sibling, Jewel, are the tamest in which you can actually reach your hand in and pet them. They are scaleless, which may feel weird, but they are very fun. They will even give you fish kisses!

Anyway, back to the cake. My mom loves her koi and her ponds, so I wanted that to portray into her cake. Sadly, I don't have the "making of" the cake pictures, because they were on my Samsung Impression, which fell in the toilet.... sad day. The cake, though, was a white cake and consisted of 7 cakes. Yes, 7. I made my own icing and filled each layer and wrapped it all in a thin layer so the cake itself would not dry out. Then the piping began, first with the water feature, then the grass. While I was doing this, my boyfriend created the water lilies, koi, and foliage.All of these were created from fondant, which I had made myself (none of that Wilton ready-made fondant I read so many bad reviews of).

The flagstone and random rocks that decorated the edges of our pond were created by my brother and myself earlier in the project. I created the marbled stone, and he created some of the grey stones and all of the baked beans looking ones, haha. Those too were made from my home-made fondant.

To make sure this was a surprise to our mom, my brother and I didn't text or call her all day on her birthday. We didn't say anything to her period until after we delivered the cake to my parents' house (my mom was away with a friend who was in on the whole thing), my dad had come home and we all left for the restaurant. She was irritated with us, but we knew we'd be forgiven later. My dad, brother, boyfriend, and I beat my mom home and set up the cake with candles (we decorated the kitchen in Hello Kitty before we left). My mom came in yelling at my dad about something but stopped dead in her tracks when she saw her cake.
"Where did you guys get this?!!?" she first exclaimed.
"Buy it? We MADE it!" I said.
She loved it even more. She didn't even want to cut into it. While we all sat and ate cake, everyone told me how delicious it was. There was so much cake though (remember it took 7 cakes to make this), my dad had actually take majority of it to work with him (truck driver). When he came home he said everyone had devoured it and said it was great.
So, all in all I think my first theme cake was a success. Everyone loved my icing and said my cake was very moist, and everyone said it was beautiful. To this day, whenever I create a cake, my mom compares it to this one, most of the time saying hers was best. =]

Note: This cake took from approximately November 17th-20th to create.