Dora and Diego

Last weekend, I had the great pleasure of creating a cake for a sweet little girl, Gwen. Her grandmother is in my Bible study group and I was thrilled to be able to do this cake for them. Gwen's parents and I also have several mutual friends, so I was excited to finally meet them!

Gwen's party was done with a Dora and Diego theme, so that was also reflected in the cake. Here it is!

This was the first time I've done a topsy-turvy style cake. See how the tiers look "crooked"? That's what they call "topsy-turvy" if you haven't heard that term before.

The Dora, Diego, Baby Jaguar, and Boots figures are chocolate transfers. I made them out of candy melts to avoid the tempering process that you have to do with real chocolate and to get the nice colors.

To create these, I started by finding pictures of each of the characters online. I then printed those pictures that I liked and taped waxed paper on top of them. I melted the candy melts in the proper colors, then put them in piping bags with small round tips (I used #1, #2, and #4 round tips). To keep the candy melts from hardening in the bags and clogging the tips, I set them on top of a heating pad set to medium and covered by a towel. This kept them warm enough to stay melted so I could easily go back and forth between the colors without having to stop, empty the bags, unclog the tips, and re-melt the candy every two minutes. So much easier!

If you do this, first outline the outer edge and main lines of the picture, then fill in with the color. Remember that the bottom is what will show when you remove, so work from the outside in. Anything that you want in the background of the image should go on last. You can also add relief colors and lines to the image after you finish it by removing the waxed paper and then piping it on the front (originally the bottom). Does that all make sense? If not, just ask me to explain the confusing parts and I will try!

The transfers are really just standing free and leaning up against the cake. In the end, I decided that to try to secure them with chocolate or fondant would just make it look messy. I was delivering it to the place of the party, so it worked out well to just set them against the cake. I knew the cake wouldn't be moved.

For the rest of the design, I wanted to generalize on the Dora and Diego theme, so I chose the colors that generally appear in the cartoons to create the idea of grass/jungle and sky without being literal. The flowers were a little girly touch because the case was for a little girl. I think the flowers are my favorite part!

Here is a pic of the cake before the transfers were added.

The final version also included a candle in the shape of a tree with Dora and Boots sitting against it. I didn't want to attach the candle until I delivered the cake and it wouldn't stay on the top otherwise, so I don't have a pic of the cake with the candle. But it was really cute! You'll have to just take my word on that. Don't worry, you can trust me! :)

For those interested in all the yummy details, here you go. The bottom tier was white/vanilla cake with milk chocolate ganache and the top tier was my dark chocolate cake with milk chocolate ganache. I hear that the plates were licked clean! Yeah!

I hope you all enjoyed my topsy-turvy Dora and Diego cake! Have a blessed week! Check back here often to see more cakes I have coming up. I also did cookies and another cake this weekend that I will show you soon!