Dora birthday cake, please help

brummiebird443

Hi Everybody, i really hope somebody can give me some much needed advice and guidance. My llittle one turns three next week and is absolutely obsessed with Dora the explorer. I've contacted our local cake shop for a cake quote and they've quoted between £50-£60!!! i love my little angel to bits but that is a tad steep. So my grand plan is to order a plain icing covered cake from COSTCO (approx £12) it looks like the picture below but without all the pretty colours, get some Dora figurines off Ebay (approx £4) and try to


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create the above cake. My question is how do i create the "green grass effect"? I've never done anything like this before so have no idea what materials i would need and how i would go about doing this. I'd appreciate any advice you could give me. Thanks again.

Gingernutmeg

The green grass on the top of the cake here looks like swirled icing ... at a guess I'd say it's a buttercream - it *could* be royal icing but it looks too glossy for that. The plants look like piped buttercream too. If you're not confident with a piping bag you could model something similar with fondant icing (the ready to roll stuff you can get at the supermarket). You can buy coloured stuff but it's cheaper to colour your own - get hold of some paste colourings and you'll get a good strong colour without adding too much liquid (don't worry about having to buy loads of colours, all you need is red, blue and yellow and you can mix your own).

mattogier

You could "paint" the plain surface of the cake with food colouring (see link http://picasaweb.google.com/limesdesign/MattsCakes - Felicity Wishes is painted on) - if you are not fully confident with this then have a back up in the way of some ready rolled royal icing that you can cover up (or practice on before commiting). There are also spray food colourings that you could use to get a plain back ground - see your local super market. see Spiderman, Telly Tubby and Power Ranger which all used a template (care of Google Images) and spray icing!)


You can use ready made royal icing mixed with a little colour to make the larger foliage and flowers and moulded by hand into shape and stuck on with a little more piped royal icing (eggwhite & sugar see google) - see sleepover birthday cake.

Use piping royal icing for the edges.

Good luck!

full-time-mum

brummiebird443 wrote: »

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I know it is not quite the same but here is how I achieved a 'Barbie' cake when my DD was 5.

Firstly, you need some sticky backed plastic or a laminator. Then you need to trawl the DIY shops for a DORA wallpaper border with a fairly large logo on it. Ask for a sample, so you can check it will work in DDs bedroom. Cut it out and cover with the plastic.
Bake a plain cake. Decide on the background colour and make either coloured glace icing or add some food colouring to some good quality white chocolate. Place logo on the top, add an appropriate coloured ribbon around the sides (optional). One Dora cake for considerably less than £50.
If you can't bake, then you could still buy a cheaper,of the shelf, non-decorated cake.

If you look here there are some pictures I managed to copy and add to a word document.

At 3, you really don't need to spend that amount of dosh.

Sorry, not a brilliant picture and I can't remember how to get the picture to display rather than the link....
http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p96/full-time-mum/cake/birthdaycake.jpg

feather_2

I'm assuming you haven't any special equipment/materials? So to start with, put a bit of green food colouring (or mix of blue and yellow) in a saucer, soak the corner of a piece of thick kitchen towel and rub it gently over the white surface of your bought iced cake. Try it on a small patch first, using more/less of the colouring until you get the right colours. You can dilute it slightly if you need to. Don't make the iced surface too wet.

While that is drying, colour a quantity of either bought white icing (in a block, not ready-rolled) and/or marzipan with green food colour (If you can get paste food colours, so much the better). Add the colour a tiny bit at a time (using a cocktail stick works well) - it dries to a darker colour than it looks. Knead the colour in so that it is even throughout. Mould blocks for the figures to stand on. Make some leaf shapes - squash a small piece of icing/marzipan flattish with your fingers and shape. If you want to be fancy, use a cocktail stick or small knife to make the veins. For the tufts of grass, put a thick blob of icing/marzipan through a (very clean!!) garlic press. Otherwise, mould by hand - roll out lots of thin shapes, making them pointy at one end. Arrange the tufts by putting several of these together and join by squashing the bottom ends gently together. If they don't stick together, add a blob of icing at the base to squash them into.

If you are enjoying this, colour smaller quantities of icing or marzipan blue, red and yellow. Make flower petals from the blue and red, and make the centres by rolling balls of yellow. If not, you could use small sweets for the flowers. Put these aside to dry (on a surface they won't stick to) or place them on the cake as you go along. Smaller pieces can usually be attached just by making the bases damp. If not, attach to the cake with smallish squashed bits of damp, green icing, pressing down lightly so it doesn't show too much.

For the bright edging (if you can't pipe): I suggest you leave the top as it is, perhaps with sweets round the edge. If not, colour another quantity of bought icing. I wouldn't try for such a dark colour, much easier to do paler. For each of the four edges, roll out two long, thin sausage shapes and twist them together. You could leave one of them white to keep it simple. Attach these 'ropes' as above. For the bottom edge, I would buy some nice bright ribbon, and attach to the cake by dampening slightly. Overlap the two ends and use double sided tape for a neat finish.

As an alternative, I would leave the top and bottom edges as they are, and fix some wide bright ribbon round the middle of the cake. It would be different than the picture, but just as effective. hth. Would love to see the finished version!

brummiebird443

Thanks for all your advice, it really is appreciated, yes you've all guessed correctly i am a complete novice when it comes to any sort of cake decoration but i thought i'd be brave this year and give it a go and more importantly i just couldnt justify spending that sort of money on a birthday cake , i'd rather spend it on other party food and a present for my little one.
If its not a complete disaster i'll post a photo of my attempt.
thanks again ladies!
:T

mattogier

brummiebird443 wrote: »

....thanks again ladies!

AND GENTS!!!:o


Good luck!

Matt

brummiebird443

mattogier wrote: »

AND GENTS!!!:o


Good luck!

Matt

sorry Matt! me being presumptious, i do apologise!

The_Good_Fairy

This'll cheer you up, I tried to make Dora cupcakes, a shockingly bad Dora hehe...


And here is Boots......


Now you know you can do better than that! I would get some fondant and have a practise while you're watching TV, you don't need to colour it at practise stage just try out the shapes.


For the grass, you could use sugar, put some in a ziplock bag and add a teeny amount of food colouring, the paste kind is better, then shake, shake, shake! Sprinkle on the cake (on the day) add your figures and voila! As a previous poster said, you dont have to go crazy for a 3 year old, she will love it whatever, my 3 year old loved the crappy cupcakes lol

Good luck, keep us posted

feclmum

before you make that cake have a look on www.coolest-birthday-cakes.com there are loads of dora cakes in the character section and most have instructions of how to make them!
this site is fantastic i made two off it last week which i would never of attempted before hope this is helpful to you

feclmum

The_Good_Fairy wrote: »

This'll cheer you up, I tried to make Dora cupcakes, a shockingly bad Dora hehe...


And here is Boots......


Now you know you can do better than that! I would get some fondant and have a practise while you're watching TV, you don't need to colour it at practise stage just try out the shapes.


For the grass, you could use sugar, put some in a ziplock bag and add a teeny amount of food colouring, the paste kind is better, then shake, shake, shake! Sprinkle on the cake (on the day) add your figures and voila! As a previous poster said, you dont have to go crazy for a 3 year old, she will love it whatever, my 3 year old loved the crappy cupcakes lol

Good luck, keep us posted

there are some fab dora cupcakes on www.coolest-birthday-cakes.com too