03 February 2009

My first Barbie Doll cake

Little Olina turned 5 this year on 人日. She celebrated her birthday in school on Fri. Since her school does not allow us to bring any cake for celebration, I made some cuppies for her to give to her friends and teachers.

Knowing how slow I work, I started making the cuppies on Wed night so that I can decorate them on Thur, in time to bring to school on Fri morning. Well, that was at least my plan. Again, by Murphy's Law, it didn't ended as nicely as I wanted it to.

I was searching through my old piles of printed recipes that I've collected since years ago and saw this Mandarin Orange cake. The recipe uses canned Mandarin Oranges. But since this is the season where all of us have abundance of oranges, I decided to use fresh ones. By the time I finished peeling the required 2 cups of oranges, it's already over 11pm and I was dog-tired. I whipped up the ingredients and put the cuppies to bake.



The recipe didn't contain any oil (thought I read it wrongly). So the cuppies tasted like Huat Kweh (发糕). I decided not to use this batch of cuppies. My decision was a right one, as the cuppies turn rather wet the next day.

On Thur morning, I started baking my required cuppies using another new untested recipe among the same pile of collected notes. This time round I chose a Chocolate Pound Cake.



It was quite a good choice. The cake was quite fluffy. I always thought pound cake would be rather dense and compact.



I only started decorating the cuppies in the evening and didn't have time to do fanciful designs, just simple Disney characters.



It has been in my plan to do a Barbie Doll cake for Olina this year, after encouragement from Rei. As I need to bring the cake to my inlaws' place on Sun, I thought I better do some planning before I started on the project. In fact, this was the first cake I ever did any planning. Those who've been reading my blog would know...lol... And I was glad I really sat down and think about it.



I didn't like the Wilton Wonder Mould as it makes the skirt very short and fat, which I thought look quite unnatural. So I use two of my medium mixing bowls and a 3" round pan to bake the cake. I also did a short 9" Lemon Pound cake as the base, as my 3 layers were not tall enough to hold the Barbie doll. I covered the base with purplish Marshmallow fondant and cut a small hole in the center to hold Barbie's legs. Pardon the poor pictures, they were taken at 4+am under my yellow dining light.



Shaping the cake


Putting Barbie into the cake



After that I went to bed as I was really too tired to carry on.

I only started decorating the cake around 3pm on Sun and finished the whole cake around 6:30pm. Hubby was rushing me as we were already late for our family dinner. If I had more time, I would very much love to add more decoration on the skirt.

Presenting to you, my first Barbie Doll cake.





I created a drape for her at the back








I tried to pay attention to the little details


Olina with her cake, she was extremely happy with it
:)


Overall I had great fun doing this cake. All decorations were done using Marshmallow fondant, including the patterns on the skirt. Though it was not a perfect cake, it is the best cake I've decorated by far. Hopefully after this I can get more confident when dealing with fondant.


Mood: Elated

17 comments:

Gina Choong said...

wah WF..passed liao! but you really very good in estimation cutting and slicing the cake into shape! I like the simple design of the dress. Melody wants a jewellry box complete with all the accessories and even asking for a dancing ballerina on it..peng san liao! Good work on yours..

Anonymous said...

Hi KWF

wah, your girl is a lucky kid! it is a lovely cake, so pretty!

regards
octopusmum

Rei said...

WF, that's a good job! The smile on her face is worth all the effort.

Halimah Ilavarasi said...

Wow I love the barbie doll! Very sweet, elegant and beautifully done!

May Low said...

Wow u are great! How i wish i was the girl. Very nice and lovely cake. :)

Anonymous said...

Hi WF,
Wow that's a very pretty cake that you had made. Your bake came in time as i am doing research on princess doll cake. Appreciate if you could email me (nancyho@dare2btotz.com) as i have some questions on MMF. Thanks a lot.

regards
Nancy

Yuri said...

hey wf, so quiet then you completed such a wonderful project! great job even though you didn't have much time!

Katharine said...

Very lovely Barbie doll cake indeed. Olina is blessed to have a mum who makes an effort to make her happy in a thoughtful way like this. Distinction! But you may want to start planning for your Karina's cake design cos she will sure to expect something more than what her sis got. And not forgetting your Prince too. Enjoy your pure joy!

KWF said...

thanks, ladies for your kind compliment.

gina, the jewellery box cake should be exciting to make, looking fwd to seeing yours.

kat, haven't got a clue what to make for the other two yet. Anyway still have more than half a year to "plan"...lol...

Anonymous said...

Hi

My 1st visit here. The cakes looks lovely ^o^. I like drape at the back and small details

Cookie said...

Hi KWF,

Your barbie doll looks very sweet, slender and elegant!

Cheers!

M said...

Hi,
may I ask your recipe for buttercream (I'm assuming you spread buttercream under the fondant)?
I tried making a doll cake too but the fondant skirt kept slipping down unless the entire cake stayed in the fridge.

KWF said...

Mel, I do not have a specific buttercream recipe. Usually I just cream butter and add icing sugar slowly into it till I get the desire sweetness.

Nisha said...

wow I love the barbie doll.can u just give me its full receipe.what all we need to make this barbie

KWF said...

ninu, you can use any butter/pound cake recipe as the cake base. Bake 2-3 small cakes in deep tins. Stack them up and shape the skirt. After that dig out a hole in the center to insert the doll and start your decoration. :)

mandy said...

WOW your cake is fantastic, absolutley amazing. I'm planning to make 1 for my daughters birthday. This is the 1st design i've come across on starting my research. I will not be looking elsewhere this is so the one i was looking for. May i just say again brilliant job, i just hope my daughter will look as happy as your daughter does when i present her with my cake? x

KWF said...

I'm glad you like it, Mandy. This was the design I did last year. You can also check out the design I did this year.