Finding Nemo Cupcakes

Tropical cupcakes with white chocolate buttercream frosting decorated with Nemo, chocolate coral, and candy pearls.

My twin grandchildren, Makena and Hunter celebrated their first birthday last week! The theme for their party was Finding Nemo, so their home was beautifully decorated with scenes from the movie. My daughter, Sunny, did an amazing job with handcrafted jelly fish hanging from the ceiling, giant sea turtles swimming through the house, and a life-size seagull saying “Mine!” as a center piece for her buffet. I guess you had to see the movie to get that “Mine!” business.

When the idea of the seagull character came up, I said, “Where are you going to find a life-size seagull that looks like it’s from the movie, sitting on a post wrapped with rope, and the words ‘mine’ coming out of his mouth?” Said Lindsay, my other daughter, “I’ll just make one.” And so she did out of chicken wire, paper mache and paint. It even had perfect webbed seagull feet! For party favors, Sunny set up a candy bar stocked with ocean-themed candies.  Guests could help themselves and take the treats home in little sand buckets! So cute.

My job was to come up with Finding Nemo cupcakes. I wanted something different and classy, even though it was a party for one-year-olds. Most of the guests were adults anyway. So, I went with the soft blue and pearly whites. Sunny showed them off on a mirrored, tiered stand and they looked beautiful. I did not use my own recipes for the cupcakes and frosting because there was too much to do with family members coming from out of town for the party, so I turned to Pinterest. I need to give a shout out to morerecipes.com for the Classic Pineapple Coconut Cake recipe I used for the cupcakes, which was very scrummy, and a thank you to littledelightscake.com for the White Chocolate Buttercream frosting, which was very rich and tinted blue. So, if you want the recipes, please visit their blogs. For this post, I just wanted to share how I decorated the cupcakes.

How To Make The Coral:

1. Draw the piece of coral on paper. I just did it free hand. I made mine 3¾ inches tall, of which 1½ inch was the stem stuck into the cupcake. Be sure to draw the stem at least ½ inch wide. It has to be sturdy, so it won’t break. Place the drawing on a cookie sheet with raised sides.
2. Place a large piece of wax paper over your drawing.
3. Melt Wilton’s Bright White candy melts per package directions and put into a piping bag.  I used Wilton tip #8. 
4. Pipe the coral onto the wax paper, filling in your drawing.
5. Sprinkle immediately with white sprinkles. I used Wilton’s.
6. Slide your drawing out from under the coral you just made and make another one next to it.
7. Put in fridge to harden. Then carefully remove the coral from the wax paper. You can re-use the loose sprinkles for more coral. Store in fridge until you decorate the cupcakes.

How To Decorate:

Very carefully stick 2 pieces of coral into the cupcake slightly towards the back. Put a clown fish in the center and in front of the coral. I found those online. Drop some pearls around Nemo. I used white pearl Sixlets for the large pearls, and white pearl nonpareils for the smaller ones.