Dora the Explorer Full Size Birthday Cake

by Leanne Brown-Fraser
(Australia)

This cake was made from a chocolate mud cake recipe (see below) in a 12" x 10" rectangle tin. Using a cut out colouring in picture of Dora, place it on the cake and then cut out the outline. Use toothpicks to mark out the different areas of the pattern.

A basic buttercream icing recipe (see below) was used to ice the cake in colours of black, pink, orange, brown, purple and skin. I then used a commercially bought black icing gel to outline Dora with.

With some of the left over cake I used a butterfly shaped cookie cutter to make an extra bit and iced it in the purple and pinks and placed the Happy Birthday plaque on that.

Chocolate Mud Cake
(multiply recipe by 2 to fit in above mentioned size tin)

250g butter
200g good milk chocolate
1 tablespoon instant coffee
1 1/2 cups boiling water
1 3/4 cups sugar
2 eggs
1 1/2 cups self raising flour
1/2 cup cocoa powder

Method
1. Preheat the oven to 150 degrees Celsius (300F). Lightly grease and line the tin with butter and baking paper.
2. Dissolve the coffee in the boiling water. Place butter into a saucepan and slowly melt on a low heat, add chocolate and melt.
3. Add coffee and sugar into the chocolate mix and stir until sugar is dissolved.
4. Transfer mixture into a large bowl and allow to cool for 10 minutes. With an electric mixer, add eggs, one at a time. Sift in half the flour and cocoa powder and mix until combined. Add the rest of the flour.
5. Pour into cake tin and bake for 1 to 1 1/4 hours. Test with a skewer in the middle of the cake. Cool cake before turning out.
6. Allow cake to cool completely before icing.

Buttercream Icing
(multiply recipe by 2 to ice cake)

125g butter softened
1 1/2 cups icing sugar
2 tablespoons milk
Food colouring *for black coloured icing, do not add milk to the icing as it will stay grey.

1. Using electric mixer, cream butter until it becomes a pale yellow colour. Add the icing sugar and mix, slowly add milk. If required more or less milk can be used. Add the colouring to your desire.
2. To ice the cake,place buttercream into piping bag with just a normal pipe tip to identify sections needed, then proceed to pipe enough icing into the area and using a palette knife, smooth out the icing.

*For skin colour, add a little bit of yellow and a tiny bit of pink food colouring