Hello, I am VERY new at making cakes infact this doll cake will be my third cake, my first was a princess cake for my dd and it bombed the second was a train cake for my son and it wasnt too bad. Well my dd b-day is comming up and I want to make a doll cake for her. I have recently became a PC consultant, so I will be using their bowl to make the cake! I have done LOTS of searching here and got some great ideas, I still have a couple questions:

1. What is pipping gel and can you get that at any grocery store?

2. I love the look of Fondant but not brave enough to try it yet, I really like buttercream icing but have found it to be too sweet, my youngest children have milk issues, I would love to learn how to make a whip cream icing, but so far the ones I have tried were WAY too soft.
Anyways so I have been practing on making buttercream icing's anyways but used some almond extract in it and loved it but my icing isn't turning out well, I want to make it a head of time, and found it seperates after like two days. AND it's still not as thick as I would like.

SO how can I make either a thick whipped (would really like to know how to do this) OR a thick buttercream icing, something that will really hold.

3. Is there any icing tips you can give me? Tools that work best? I plan to play with the icing for a while before I attempt the cake, just want to cover all the bases so maybe this time this cake will look really good!

Thanks inadvance
Misty

I'd try the Wilton Buttercream icing if you're kids are having milk issues. This is the icing you use in Wilton classes. 1 cup solid white vegetable shortening, 1 teaspoon flavoring. I use clear almond, 2 Tablespoons Water, 1 pound powdered sugar, 1 Tablespoon Wilton Meringue powder. Cream the shortening, flavoring and water. Add dry ingredients and mix on medium speed until all ingredients have mixed together. Blend an additional minute or so until creamy.


This makes a really thick icing. If you want it to be thinner add water a little bit at a time.

Wilton makes piping gel and they also make the meringue powder you need in the icing. Michael's, WalMart, Hobby Lobby, etc. Sell that stuff. The only thing I used piping gel for was to transfer an image to a cake.

Hope this helps a little bit. Good luck!

I would go for the White as Snow Buttercream recipe from this site. Easy to make (even if you have a hand mixer), easy to pipe for beginners like me, and you can cut back on the sugar if you would rather it not be so sweet, but don't judge the taste until the icing has set up for a bit.

I frost my doll cakes with a spatula and I have the base sitting on a turntable. When it is all frosted, I run my spatula from top to bottom is a "comma" patter all around the skirt so it has a little "flow" to th skirt. I frost the doll's body with a small spatula with the doll's arms raised up, then I put the arms back into position and stick the doll into the frosted skirt.

True the fondant has a pretty look, but it doesn't taste as well. BC is easier to work with. There's no milk in my BC; but even the recipes with milk in them don't have enough milk to create "milk issues" with people who eat it.

You can see that "comma" pattern pretty well in these pics:

those are beautiful...........also for the tips......maybe since you're a beginner you'd want to look into some of the drop flower tips...they make very nice (and impressive for a beginner)flowers and they're as simple as could be!!

If you really want to go with fondant, try the marshmallow fondant recipe on this site. It's easy to work with, tastes a whole lot better than the Wilton kind, and is pretty cheap to make. Just use about 1/4 to 1/3 less powdered sugar than what it calls for - at least from my experience.

wow those dolls are just great!!! thanks for the tip, I always wondered how to do that design, thanks again

have a nice day
Lorris

Don't forget salt! Add up to 1 tsp in your buttercream, I use the really fine grained popcorn salt, but you can use regular. It will cut the sweetness down really well!!