Dora Cake

It was sweet Miss Magoo’s birthday today. For my kids’ birthdays, I let them pick out what kind of a cake they want me to make. And this year, Miss Magoo wanted a Dora Cake.

At first, it was sounding like Miss Magoo wanted a sheet cake with Dora drawn on it. But when we started to look at more ideas, she quickly decided she wanted a bowl cake. I had a hard time figuring out the size of bowl to use, since most of the recipes I was finding use a Pampered Chef batter bowl, and I don’t have one of those. But I finally decided to give it a try with a 2 qt. mixing bowl, and it turned out great.

What you need:

2 qt. mixing bowl
boxed cake mix, or recipe for cake mix
frosting
garnish (I used tapioca pearls)
Dora doll (washed well)
frosting bag (or sandwich bag with tiny hole cut in the corner)– frosting tips are optional

Preheat oven to 350º. Grease 2 qt. mixing bowl.

Mix cake batter as usual in a regular mixing bowl. Pour into greased bowl. Bake until a skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean. (All of the directions I saw said around an hour, but mine was done around 45 minutes, so definitely keep an eye on it!)

Let cool for 10 minutes, and then invert onto a pan and let finish cooling. (I made an additional 13×9 cake, because we have a lot of family members at birthday parties. So I inverted my bowl cake on top of the cooled, frosted 13×9 cake).

Once entirely cool, frost. I added blue food coloring to my frosting, as Miss Magoo wanted a Snow Princess Dora cake. Use a spoon to scoop out just enough cake to push the Dora doll down into the cake. If you accidentally scoop out too much cake, just shove some back in around the Dora doll (you can tell I’m not a professional, right?).

Frost the dress, and then frost a bodice directly on the doll. This part is a little bit tricky, and you’ll want to move her arms around in order to get the bodice on well– this is where the piping bag (or sandwich bag) comes in handy. Scoop a bit of the frosting into the bag, cut a tiny hole, and use the hole to direct the frosting to the smaller areas, like the straps over Dora’s arms, and the bodice under Dora’s arms.

I used a toothpick to make flowery shapes around Dora’s skirt, and then put 3-4 tapioca pearls in the center of each flower. I also pressed tapioca pearls into the bodice.

Miss Magoo just loved her cake. Prior to frosting it, it was looking kind of sad. She actually said, “Well even if it doesn’t look pretty, it will taste good.” So I was so glad that once the frosting was added, it was actually cute!