Kokeshi Japanese doll cake

I wanted to make a cake for a dear friend who has been really wonderful and helpful to me, especially in the last couple of months when I've had to juggle a few things.  I really don't think I could have managed without her and this was a way to say thank you to her for being such a wonderful person.


She is an excellent baker so making the perfect cake for her was a little stressful (!) and I have to confess this is the second time I had to bake a cake as the first recipe (different one) I tried was unsuccessful.  I honestly thought my oven wasn't working properly until I realised it was the new pan I was using that was giving me issues.  I usually have cake pans that are non-stick and darker in colour and this was silver coloured and I forgot they bake a little differently.  Anyway, I managed to make it a success the second time around by adjusting the temperature in the oven so all is good!

This is an orange cranberry butter cake and is soo sooo good.  I will leave you with the recipe in the next post as I think you will enjoy it.  Luckily I made another batch with cupcakes, so we have been enjoying it all week.  Yum!

Here is the cake all decorated with the Kokeshi dolls.  I made a couple of extra ones, and at first I thought I could fit them all onto the cake but they kept falling off as they were too close to the edge so I went with only three.  They are all made of fondant and were really fun to do.  I just printed out pictures from the net to get an idea of what I wanted to do and then came up with these.

The little cherry blossom flowers are made with a PME flower cutter set and for the rope border at the bottom I used my extruder gun with the three round holes joined together and just twisted the strands.  You can do this without the extruder gun by rolling a couple of fondant logs and then twisting them together.  The letters are cut with a Patchwork alphabet cutter set.

Thank you, Diane.  I hope you enjoyed your little present. :)