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I was so excited when I saw this new design on Threadless, because I love octopuses (octopi?) in any form. I pickle baby octopuses, I cook calamari, and I make octopus-shaped cookies using my octopus cookie cutter. Additionally, I’m fascinated by octopi themselves – they are super smart, and just a little bit creepy. Instead of copying the t-shirt design one-to-one, I decided to place the sad octopus in a sea, surrounded by other octopi.

I began by baking one of my favourite cakes – a chocolate cake with melted chocolate pieces and whipped egg whites. It’s super chocolate-y, but the whipped egg whites help keep it light, instead of being very dense. I made a double batch of batter and cooked it into two cakes. I let them cool, trimmed the edges, and then covered them in white chocolate ganache.

I left that overnight, and the next day, started to work on the fondant. I used some left over green fondant from my “picket” entry to make a swirly blue-green sea foam-type colour, then coloured other pieces darker green and dark blue. I rolled each piece out, then rolled them together to create a fondant background to represent the sea.

Using my octopus cookie cutter, I cut out 6 octopi and attached them to the sides of the cake. I diluted some gel colours with vodka and handpainted each of the octopi a different colour. I used a stipple effect with my brush to mimic the colouring of actual octopus. When that had dried, I went over them again with silver lustre dust, to make them a little bit sparkly. I added small circles of fondant as their eyes, adding the eyeballs with an edible icing marker.

Finally, I cut out a piece of white fondant to act as the octopus looking for work, cut out the legs/tear-off papers, and put him on the cake. I added the numbers and facial features using my edible marker.

I took the cake to work where it was enjoyed by my colleagues – although some of them were a little scared to be eating a cake-octopus! I had a lot of fun doing this cake – it didn’t matter if everything wasn’t perfect, and the design was fairly forgiving. Once again it’s been great seeing all the Threadcakes entries and a lot of fun to participate!