How Would I Go About Making A Dora The Explorer Cake?
Decorating By Sunshine0507 Updated 8 Mar 2007 , 11:43pm by wgoat5
I have 2 children, both girls. My oldest daughter is about to turn 2 in March. She has been through a lot in the past few months...we moved out of my mom's house and into a townhouse and then she became a big sister in January (which is a big change from being the only child). Although she has had to endure several changes, she has done a tremendous job with adjusting to everything. My daughter is a huge Dora the Explorer fan - who isn't at her age, right!?! I would like to make her an actual Dora cake. I was wondering if you could give me some ideas, tips, coaching, etc...on how to go about making a Dora cake. Anything would be helpful. I want to make her 2nd birthday as special for her as possible.
I made a dora cake for my neice. I took a stand up bear pan and carved the nose and used that as dora and then i put her on a big round cake that was decorated with flowers.
It was the the first non-wilton flower cake i ever made. If i had to do it again i woul dmake her eyes more round and her coloring was to dark, but my neice is only 1 and she knew who it was.
I can;t post the pictures but i found a cake kind of like it at coolest-birthdaycakes.com
My 2 year-old adores Dora also!! That is what we have to watch all the time!! I have a few Dora cakes in my photos if you would like to see them. You can do a gallery search and it brings up several pages of Dora cakes.
Hope that helps 
WEll how much cake decorating experience do you have? I think wilton has a pan that a newbie could do with the star tip. Or you could by some figurines to go on top. If you have more experience than that you could do a frozen buttercream transfer or chocolate transfers. I have one in my gallery if you check my photos that I did by making chocolate transfers. You could also do a search in the gallery and find something that interests you and then come back here and post questions on how to do it (link a picture if possible)
Thank you very much for the advice and sharing your photos with me. I'm not very experienced but I'm not completely new to all this, either. I do need help because I want to make it as perfect as I can. Any help is welcomed.
Well, I have never made a 3-D cake before and admire all that do...I am a chicken! 
The Dora cake I made in my pictures was my first paid cake and I used the picture from one of my kids coloring books and piped everything. Took forever and a day but they really liked it. That one is huge (14 inch cake) but you could scale down any design if you were looking to do a picture on the top of the cake. I put the stripes on the side because I couldn't get the frosting smooth 
but it turned out to be a technique I really liked.
After looking through some of the cakes in the gallery, I noticed that some people used a Dora cake pan to help with the shape...would that be recommended? Should I do it from scratch or use box mix? Since this is really my very first time making a cake like this, any help is welcomed to advise me on how to go about making the first move. I have experience making traditional decoration cakes but nothing to this nature.
depends on what your preference is. if you want to add an extender recipe to a mix, here is a great one for carving or stacking
1 box mix
1 c flour
1 c sugar
1 c sour cream
1 box pudding mix
1/3 c oil
1/2 c liquid (milk, water, coffee, fruit puree)
1 tsp vanilla (or other flavor)
1/3 tsp salt
Sift dry ingredients, add wet, mix for 2 minutes at 325- adding a few extra minutes to baking time
crusting buttercream - great for 3d cakes
2 lbs powdered sugar
1/2 c butter
1/2 c vegetable shortening (or all butter)
2 tb milk
1 tsp vanilla
1 tb meringue powder
cream butter, disolve salt in milk/vanilla, add. add sugar and m.powder a cup at a time. mix on LOW speed for 7-10 minutes. thin with 1 tsp of liquid at a time if thinner consistency is desired.
(this is a double recipe and makes 6 cups)
you could use a shaped pan or make a paper template, place on top of the cake and carve with a sharp knife (i am assuming you mean flat 2D?)
a simple way to frost would be to fill in the lines with the star tip, or you could do a buttercream transfer. make medium/thin consistency icing. find a picture (a coloring book works) tape the pic down. cover with parcment paper, tape down. (your icing will come out reversed from the picture so keep that in mind if you are using words). now trace and fill with different colored icings until the picture is complete. freeze. place on iced cake upside down, peel off paper. add a border if youd like. for this technique, you'll want to use all butter, no shortening in the buttercream.
i made this one for my niece using a frozen buttercream transfer. i just got a pic of dora that she liked and enlarged the pic by using a copy machine and traced it on to wax paper, and then filled in. Freeze it and then transfer it.
ok i found the picture i was talking about. I did my cake almost exactly like it. The dora was just star tipped on the stanidng bear pan. i used a cake mix for the bear pan in vanilla and i used the chocolate cake recipe from the hersheys cocoa which is amazing if you can find dutch pressed cocoa. Here is the picture i was talkig about and the back of my cake (the colors where to dark so lighten them)
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