Girls Birthday Parties - Making a Princess Dora Doll Cake

The only birthday cake that I remember from my childhood was a doll cake from my 4th birthday. I remember that it had lots of pink and I was so excited that I also got to keep and play with the doll.

When it came time for my first daughter's 1st birthday (15 years ago), that doll cake was the first thing that came to my mind. I was lucky enough at that time to have a friend whose father owned a bakery, and he made an adorable cake for her using a small barbie-like doll. Of course, at only 1 year old my daughter was more interested in the frosting and presents than the design of the cake, but the adults all enjoyed it and I have some cute photos for our scrapbooks as a result.

When it came time this last year for my second daughter, Emily's third birthday, I planned to follow our usual routine which was to order a cake from the grocery store bakery. I asked Emily what she wanted her birthday theme to be and was not surprised when she clearly explained how she wanted a Dora the Explorer birthday party. For her, everything was Dora and Boots.. the TV show, DVDs, clothes, toys.. everything! She was making me actually start to miss watching the Wiggles, which she had been consumed with for the previous 2 years!

So everything was planned.. Emily would have a Dora party! What could possibly make her change her mind at the last minute?

A princess party.

Emily's friend, Sophia, had her birthday party just a couple of weeks before Emily's. Sophia's mom always does great Martha Stewart-Like parties putting a lot of time and effort into perfect and unique food and decorations right down to the little bits of confetti on the table! I absolutely love the results she gets when she tries out new ideas that she reads or hears about, but I could never do it myself.. I just don't have the patience. She and her husband had spent all night working on the birthday cake, and it turned out fabulous! They designed a princess castle with floral vines and a princess on the top. When sitting on the table, the cake was taller than all of the kids, and they were all very excited. All of the girls brought their princess dress-up dresses and wore them for the party. Emily had so much fun that she insisted she wanted a princess party too!

The problem was that I had already bought Dora birthday decorations, party favors, gift bags, wrapping paper, etc.. the only thing left to do was to order the cake. So what was my solution? A Princess Dora birthday party!

I checked with our bakery and the Dora cake that they offered was not a Princess Dora version, so we thought that our only solution would be to just have a cake made and put some miniature Dora figures on top. But that idea didn't work either, the only Princess Dora figures I could find were full-size dolls. That's when I again thought back to the doll cakes that I had loved so much as a kid. Emily had not had a doll cake for one of her birthdays yet and I knew that this was a perfect age to do one.

Being a busy mom with a new baby (my third daughter was only 2 months old), I didn't feel like taking the time to look for a bakery on a few days notice that would do a doll cake. So, I decided to make it myself. I only had 8-inch and 9-inch cake pans, so I bought 2 additional pans, a 6-inch and 4-inch. I also bought plastic decorator tips, a package of plastic disposable decorator frosting bags, and decorator food coloring (you can use regular but get the much brighter colors if you use the jarred decorator kind.) For the cake, I used 1 lemon and 1 confetti boxed cake mixes. I added 1 tsp of lemon flavor extract to the lemon mix, and 1 tsp of vanilla extract to the confetti mix (I always like to add extra flavor to my cakes). I then baked the cakes using the 4, 6 and 8 inch pans, cooled them, removed from the pans, and put them in the freezer overnight wrapped in waxed paper.

I absolutely love buttercream decorator frosting, so I made a vegan version of it for decorating (I also made vegan cupcakes for my brother's family since they are vegan). I added lemon flavored extract to half of the frosting, and vanilla to the other half. I then removed the cakes from the freezer and stacked them with frosting in between the layers. Using a large knife, I cut around the edges of the layers at an angle making the cake into a cone shape and put the cake back into the freezer for about an hour.

Having worked at a bakery for a short time as a teenager, one tip that I learned was that it was much easier to decorate frozen cakes. You get less crumbs into the frosting, and if you do happen get crumbs in it then you can easily freeze it again and add another layer of frosting to cover up the first layer. So after putting the cake layers together and freezing for an hour, I added the first layer of yellow frosting around the whole cake using a spatula, then froze it again while I prepared the decorator bags with the other colors.

For the doll, I used a Dora doll from the storybook collection. I cut a hole in the top of the cake and wrapped the bottom half of the doll in saran wrap that was secured with a rubber band (this makes it much easier to clean the doll off later when she is removed). The cake is then made to be the doll's skirt, which for Dora is a little off on the proportions, but the kids don't notice! Most people making doll cakes use Barbie dolls or cheap plastic dolls that you can find at hobby or craft stores. I searched all over the internet looking for an example of one done using Dora and did not find anything.. thus the reason I decided to write this lens!

Decorator frosting in bags is intimidating for a lot of people that have never decorated cakes, but they are actually very easy to use! You simply choose a tip, drop it in the bag, add frosting, then snip off the corner of the bag that covers the tip. Next, try to get as much air out as possible and twist the open end of the bag closed and squeeze the frosting out like it's a big bag of toothpaste. Just practice first on a plate before using a tip and decide what you want to do with it on the cake. Once the base layer was complete, I was able to decorate the cake in less than 10 minutes! I originally had planned on doing it much more detailed, but found myself scrambling to get it finished and it still turned out great for a 3 year old party.

1/2 cup vegetable shortening
1/2 cup margarine
2 tsp vanilla extract (or other flavoring)
4 cups powdered sugar
2 Tablespoons Soy Milk (be sure to use rice milk if anyone may have allergies to soy or nuts)

Cream shortening, margarine, and powdered sugar with electric mixer. Beat in vanilla scraping sides of bowl. Add milk and beat on high speed until light and fluffy. When not being used, keep icing in the refrigerator covered with a moistened towel to keep it from drying out.