Coolest Dora the Explorer Cake 74

by Andrea H.
(Brisbane, Queensland, Australia)

Homemade Dora the Explorer Cake

I made this Dora the Explorer cake for a friend's daughter who is a huge Dora fan. It was for her 4th birthday party.

Never having made a cake like this before, I used a black line picture from a colouring in book to copy. I resized it to fit a large slab cake (which was a firm butter cake) on the photo copier. Then I traced it onto baking paper and cut out the different shapes. I then coloured fondant icing ready to roll out to make the different parts.

To make the cake taste better and the help the fondant icing stay in place, I covered it all in butter cream icing first. Then I rolled out a large piece of aqua coloured fondant to cover the whole cake to get a smooth surface to work on.

After that I layered the pieces I had coloured and cut out on in the right order to 'build' the face, sticking them down with a little sugar syrup. (Tip - when making dark colours like Dora's hair which require a large amount of colout to be worked into the fondant, the fondant becomes very soft and hard to work with. That is why the hair is a little funny. I should have put it into the fridge to firm it up before trying to pick up the piece and move it onto the cake.)

Lastly, I stuck on black skittles (lollies)for the eyes and yellow skittles for the bracelet.

I think it was a hit! This was my first attempt at this style and it was quite easy so I would encourage others to give it a go.