I know, I know, I'm sorry. Worst blogger ever. Honestly though, I have been pretty busy with other things lately, and even considered giving up the blog altogether.
Instead, I have decided I am going to try very hard to post something more often - even if it's just a picture of the latest thing I've been baking (or sewing!). If less wordy = less time consuming, then that's the way those posts will be. At the end of the day, you'd probably rather just see pictures of cake than listen to me ramble anyway, right? :o)
So anyway, this is a cake I made for a little girl's 6th birthday recently(ish). She wanted a Dolly Varden style Snow White cake. I've never done a Dolly Varden cake before, so it was quite interesting and fun for me to try it out. Here's what I ended up with:
Snow is wearing her classic outfit, all made from sugarpaste (ie rolled fondant icing), including the bodice and sleeves, which I stuck directly onto the doll. The only things that aren't edible are the doll itself, her hair, and her crown (this is a plastic one that came with the doll, so I figured why make work for myself when the plastic one is just as cute anyway - plus the birthday girl can keep it for her other dolls afterward). You can't really see it very well in the photo, but the little apple next to Snow was completely covered in red cake decorating glitter - it was super sparkly and looked pretty cool, if I do say so myself! :o)
The cake underneath the skirt was chocolate Madeira cake, and I baked it in two sections - one in a pudding basin (for the shape), and the other in a regular round eight-inch cake tin. I then stacked the pudding basin one on top of the round one and trimmed them to become one cohesive skirt shape. This gave the cake a good amount of height. If I had just used the pudding basin alone, she would have been a very short and stumpy princess! There is of course such a thing as a proper Dolly Varden cake tin, but I don't have one, and I've also heard that they're quite difficult to work with. Anyway, I found this method worked just fine.
Not sure if the method I chose for covering the skirt was the best one, as it was a lot harder than I had expected. But I think the end result was pretty good for my first try - and the birthday girl and her mum were Thrilled, which is the important thing!
