One of my hobbies is making cakes.  I make a lot of cakes (you can see some of them here:  frostedinsanity.com).  In fact, my cake making career started years ago as I made my  own kids’ birthday cakes, that soon became a part-time job making cakes for other kids.

As my kids have gotten older, their interest in a really cool cake has waned.  So while I’m making robots, and airplanes and monster trucks for everyone else, my boys have chosen “cookie” cakes instead.

This year my son turned 18, and when he refused any kind of decorated cake, I ignored him and made him a sushi cake.  We’ve been in to sushi lately, and other than his computer, I was hard-pressed to find a cool cake subject.

I work with fondant a lot, and working with candy isn’t much different – just a little different texture, and a lot stickier!

My work space always seems to end up looking like this picture.  I used to tell my mom that a creative mess is better than tidy idleness.  Honestly, I just can’t be bothered to clean up as I go – totally messes up the creative zen!

Make Candy Sushi

I’ll do my best at posting a “recipe ” here, but mostly you just need a list of tools and some ingenuity.  I find that most of my inspiration comes from everyday life and a possible sugar high.

You will need lots of soft chewy candies.  My favorites: Starbursts, Airheads,  Chewy Jolley Ranchers,and Gummy Worms.

You’ll also need rice cripsie treats (or you can make your own recipe), food coloring, strawberry gel (found in the produce section), gel food coloring.

Tools:  rolling pin, (plastic works best), sharp knife, food scissors, cutting board, parchment paper, microwave.

Before you begin, unwrap a bunch of candies.  Go ahead and eat a couple of your favorites.  Might as well get that out of the way early in the project 🙂  To get the candies soft enough to work with, you will need to pop them in the microwave.  Start with 5 seconds and then add a couple seconds as needed to make your candy soft and pliable.

 

Tootsie roll colored with black food coloring made pretty awesome seaweed for the Candy Sushi.

R oll out a square of rice crispie treats.

A rice crispie square rolled flat.

Roll out the black (seaweed) tootsie rolls as thin as you can Then stretch it with your hands to make it even thinner.  Cut the seaweed so that it is the same size as your flattened rice crispie bar.

 

Cut several other colors of candies into small strips or chunks to represent, avacados, crab meat, carrots or other sushi-like ingredients.  Lay them on top of the seaweed.

Starting at the end with all the extra sushi-like pieces, roll up all layers into a roll, and cut into slices with a sharp knife.

 

To make lobster, soften and roll out several red Starburst candies (any red colored flavor).  Soften a white airhead candy and pull/cut/roll into thin strips.  Lay them on top of the red layer.  Roll out flat.  Cut into strips and lay across the prepared rice crispies.

Other sushi options:

Mix red hots into strawberry gel.  Spoon onto round rice crispie rolls that have been rolled in seaweed (black-colored tootsie rolls).

Asparagus Rolls.

Soften green air heads.  Roll into a rope.  Snip the top of the rope with kitchen scissors to make the asparagus heads.  Lay the asparagus on a small rectangle of rice crispie treats.  Wrap with a ribbon of seaweed.

Crunch Rolls

Create the sushi rolls as shown above.  Cut into bite-sized pieces.  Frost the sides of the roll with  buttercream frosting and then roll in toasted coconut.  Top with caramel-colored buttercream piping.

Ginger and wasabi

Soften pink or yellow starbursts.  Flatten and then fold it back and forth on top of itself.

Color buttercream frosting with a pale green food coloring.  Press through a star decorating tip.

The cake was a hit, and I can look forward to next years celebration.  To see more of my insane creations check this out!