I am making a "sushi" cake and want to know how best to achieve the most realistic appearance, especially for the fish. What substrate would be best - gumpaste, fondant, other? And how should I color or paint it to achieve the subtle glistening of real fish. I am an amateur cake baker, but have some experience with gumpaste, fondant and isomalt. I'm no expert, but am pretty crafty. The cake is a surprise for my husband's birthday and we are flying to the birthday destination. I was planning on having the cake baked by a bakery at the destination. I want to take the "table settings": sushi plates, chopsticks and sushi to set atop the cake on arrival. Any help in either the decoration or the air transport would be appreciated!

When I made sushi for a cake, I used finely ground coconut for the rice, and fondant for the fish. I painted the fish with gel color to make it shiny.

I made all my sushi out of modeling chocolate...the plates and the chopsticks were made of gumpaste. You can use piping gel to make the fish a little glossy. If the humidity is hi were you are going you need to make your pieces out of a medium like gumpaste that will not melt or droop.

Here's a sushi cake I did. I didn't do the actual fish, however, I saw a cake show from Vegas and the girls were making sushi. She used fondant and painted it with luster dust. She had a kinda coral colored fondant, drew lines across it and painted them white, then finished the whole thing by painting it with a similar dust.

http://cakecentral.com/gallery/1393696

Here's one I did.   http://cakecentral.com/gallery/1175038

I used mini marshmallows cut diagonally for the rice. I used fondant for the fish. I think the piping gel to make it look glossy would be a great idea, I wish I did it for mine.

This cake was I think an 8" round. I've yet to do a cute set up with sushi on plates but hope to in the future. =D

For my first sushi cake I used fondant for the nori, shrimp, tuna, wasabi, and ginger, orange piping gel for the salmon roe, regular sized marshmallows covered in coconut for all of the rice parts, tinted buttercream for the middles of the maki sushi, and gumpaste for the bowl and chopsticks.

I'm doing another sushi cake next week, and found these online:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004N8LMFM/?tag=cakecentral-20

I did a trial run and they were super cute! I plan on using the candy tops, but not the rice mixture. I'm planning on making cake balls for the rice part!

Here is my attempt at a sushi cake. I used dried fruit from a gourmet food store (dried cantaloupe, dried grapefruit, etc) or made my own fruit leather, gummy beads (for the salmon roe), chocolate sauce for the soy sauce, marshmallow fluff with a little powder sugar worked to the consistency of tamago, the nori was moldable chocolate darkened to almost black. The sushi lover this was for was really wowed!

http://cakecentral.com/gallery/2024605

I used rice krispee cereal shaken in a bag with powdered sugar for the "rice". Picture is in my photos. I made 3 rolls instead of one cake and then garnished the cake board with "wasabi" and "radish" both made of fondant.

The Sushi cake in my gallery was made with fruit roll ups and twinkies, and buttercream. I used swedish fish on one, the shrimp and salmon ,plate and chopsticks are fondant.

I made my sushi pieces using krispy treats for rice, fruit roll ups for the seaweed, orange nonpariel sprinkles for the roe, and for the fish I used fondant for some pieces and Starburst candy for others. I brushed the fish pieces with piping gel for shine. I really liked using the starbursts... I think they are yummier than plain fondant.