Dora the Explorer Cake

Finally breaking the awkward silence – it’s been a while. Somehow life managed to get ahead of me ever since our vacation in late August to Vancouver, so only recently did I get a chance to slow down, take a hard look at my calendar, and wonder where the past couple of months went.

We have some wedding plans finalized, but I’m going to hold off talking about that for a while…I feel like the plans are a little out of control right now, what with me being so busy that I’ve been playing perpetual catch-up to all the little details that need to get done.

So instead, I’m going to distract you with Dora the Explorer. Dora and I recently had the pleasure to get to know each other very well, as her and her friends remained on repeat for a couple of days over Thanksgiving at the cottage. Dora showed me just how important she is in every little kid’s life, so that I was totally prepared when I was asked to do a Dora the Explorer cake for a little girl turning 2 (remember Ella?).

It was fun creating Dora out of a sugar cookie. I chose to shape her on a cookie and not a typical fondant or modeling paste because it’s slightly easier to capture her expression and control the “essence” of the character when it’s only 2D. I’m glad I did, because even with the cookie, Dora was being a bit of a diva, what with all the colours of her outfit.

  

Hint – I added a little bit of cocoa powder to the royal icing to make the colour for Dora’s hair. Somehow, using too much of my black food colouring paste wasn’t looking too appetizing to me. It worked out great, and I actually really liked the slight chocolate-y taste of the icing!