Dora Cake

Jacob loves Dora. And, considering I was having some guilty feelings about not having a big 2nd birthday party for him (like the girls have always had), I decided to test the limits of my cake decorating skills and attempt to make him a Dora cake.

My favorite cakes are the ones we get from Santoni's Market in Glyndon that have yummy vanilla custard in the middle. So, I figured, since I'm going out on a limb here, why not try that as well?

Luckily for me, my good friend, Michelle, is a cake decorator extraordinaire! She gave me lots of tips on how to proceed.

Day 1: I printed a picture of Dora's head and taped it under a piece of wax paper. Next, I whipped up a batch of royal frosting and tinted it in to the various colors needed to make Dora. I outlined Dora's head and features with royal frosting, let that dry, and then filled in the details with more frosting. Let me tell you, as an inexperienced cake decorator...this was no easy feat and took me most of a day! It had to set for a day or two to harden so I had ample opportunity to admire my work.

Day 2: I made a yellow 9x13 cake and cut it in half. Then, I piped homemade buttercream frosting around the edge of the bottom half (to hold the custardy filling in). Then, after making the custardy filling, I spread it on the cake bottom.

Next, the cake top goes on...

Now, more homemade buttercream frosting to frost the cake. It didn't go on as smooth as I would have liked, so I'll try to improve on that in the future.

Then, I SLOWLY peeled the royal frosting Dora off of the wax paper and set it on the cake and piped a little more buttercream around it. I tinted some of the buttercream red, piped a border around the bottom and wrote, "Jacob is 2" on top. (Silly me, didn't leave enough room for "Happy Birthday" so I had to think of something shorter to write.)

And, while it was far from perfect or professional, the ones who matter most to me LOVED it!