I made an "Elsa" cake, and so can you!

Remember last year, when Lily turned 4 and I made this cake?

Apparently this is thing now in our family. 'Cause guess what Lily wanted for her 5th birthday cake? 

An Elsa cake, of course.

So, even though I had kind of sworn off the whole "doll in the cake thing". I did it. Cause I love her and she's turning 5 which is turning me into a sappy hot mess.

Thankfully, the cake didn't turn out a hot mess!

So... here we go! Your handy-dandy easy-peasy "doll in the cake dress" How To!

Step One: Make a double recipe of a cake. Any kind. Since this was an "Elsa" cake, we went with blue velvet, which is basically red velvet with blue food coloring. In the photos this cake looks chocolate, but really, it's blue. Ish. I used Martha Stewart's red velvet recipe, because of course I did.

I baked 1/4 of the batter in a round bowl, which didn't come out all that good. I think I have the wrong kind of bowl. Anyway, I ended up with 2 rounds and a small bowl-like shape (1/4 of the cake batter went to make cupcakes for another event.)

Step Two: Cut the layers of cake in half. I froze the cake after making it, which makes it much easier to slice. 

Step Three: Start layering the cake with icing. Cut a small round hole in each layer. Don't worry about the icing reaching the edge of the cake layer after the first one. It will be trimmed off later.

Step Four: Put your bowl-shape piece on top. Try not to fret too much about how crispy it is on the outside and gooey on the inside. Our doll is really tall, and wearing high heels (which I crazy glued to her feet because I am so sick of looking for doll shoes.) So I ended up adding a few stray pieces to the very top of the cake so the doll's bum would be covered up.

Step Five: Carefully trim around the cake sides so you have a "dress" shape. Then ice with your first layer of icing, helpfully called the "crumb layer".  I used simple butter cream (butter, vanilla, powdered sugar, a splash of milk.) Cream cheese icing works really well too. By the end I used three sticks of butter and about 1 1/2 lbs of powered sugar to make enough icing. 

Step Six: Stick the doll in! Position her like she's singing "Let It Go." This is very important, obviously.

Step Seven: Apply the final layer of icing, hopefully crumb free.

Step Eight: Decorate with sprinkles, cut out snowflakes, etc. A professional would have used marzipan snowflakes and had a tiny Olaf, but we're not professionals, are we?

Step Nine: Very carefully wrap your cake in plastic wrap and hide it in the fridge. Or lock the fridge, or whatever you need to do to keep your birthday girl from seeing the cake, or from anyone from ruining your hard work.

Step Ten: Log on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc to brag about how you made an Elsa cake. This step is the most important, obviously.

Happy Baking!