Instructions

1. Mix a batch of royal icing to a thicker piping consistency rather than a thin flooding consistency. The icing should be able to hold its shape when you pipe a line. To make a basic royal icing, mix 4 tablespoons of meringue powder for every 4 cups of powdered sugar, plus 3 to 6 tablespoons of water to achieve the desired consistency. Tint the royal icing to the desired shade with gel food coloring rather than liquid food coloring because liquids thin out the icing.

2. Insert a medium, round decorating tip in a decorating bag. Fill the bag with about 1/2 cup of royal icing. This is more than enough icing to make the branches to cover an 8- to 9-inch round cake with a sea fan, but you might need more to cover an full sheet cake or much less to make a small accent sea fan. Squeeze out a few lines of frosting on a piece of parchment paper to clear out any air bubbles and move the frosting into the decorating tip.

3. Pipe five to seven vertical "branches" on the cake, spreading them evenly out so they take up the entire desired space for the sea fan, whether you want a smaller sea fan as an accent or a large sea fan to cover an entire round cake. Think of this like making a tree canopy without horizontal branches or a trunk, or like a multi-trunked shrub. Each of the branches should emanate from a short nub at the base.

4. Insert a small, round decorating tip in a new decorating bag. Add another 1/2 cup of the royal icing to this bag.

5. Pipe multiple vertical branches stemming laterally from each of the main branches. Add four or five of these smaller diameter branches for each main branch, spaced evenly along the length of the larger branches. Although these branches aren't as wide as the main branches, they should extend to the same length. This forms the basic shape of the sea fan which can have a relatively smooth, even round shape or a few curves along the edges.

6. Fill a third decorating bag with royal icing. Snip the tip from the decorating bag to make a tiny hole smaller than the small, round decorating tip.

7. Make additional vertical lines off of the secondary lines so the distance between lines at the top is the same as the distance between lines at the bottom. In a fan shape, the distance between lines spreads out from the bottom to the top. When finished, the design as a whole should be a series of closely spaced vertical lines of different thicknesses.

8. Fill in the vertical lines from left to right with short, curved lines that start at one vertical line and end at the next vertical line. Start another curve at the line where the first curve ended, extending it to the next vertical line. Repeat this pattern until you have a series of curves from the far left line to the far right. Make additional rows of curved lines until you fill in the sea fan all the way to the tips of the vertical lines.