Miss Josie decided that for her fourth birthday she wanted to have a Barbie Party. Her Mummy believes that Josie's choice of theme is inspired by Alana's. The proof: for her fourth birthday, Alana had a princess party, the following year, Josie wanted a princess party. Last year when she turned five, Alana had a Barbie party....so perhaps this is the root of Josie's inspiration.
To be fair, Alana's Mermaid Barbie birthday cake was inspirational in itself.
Thus Heather and I made plans on Friday to create a beautiful, but less spectacular Barbie birthday cake for Josie. Heather had bought a new Barbie doll to sit beside, or on the cake (our plans were quite non specific) and she was convinced that Josie would be beside herself with excitement at the thought of having a new Barbie.
So at 11 Heather and Josie arrived. The girls quickly disappeared upstairs to destroy every room they discovered play while Heather and I set about making buns and the cake. We baked three different coloured square layers of cake, stuck them together with jam and buttercream and then rolled out the fondant icing. As we draped it over the cake Heather remarked that it looked a bit like a tablecloth. Inspiration struck. A tiny doll's tea set was quickly unearthed, the plates were given napkins, flowers were added and a cake stand with pastries from my doll's house provided the final touch. We stood back in amazement, high fiving our obvious skill as cake decorators.
Heather brought Josie in to see her cake. I'll be honest, we anticipated gasps of delight. Josie looked at it and shook her head. "No." she said.
Heather and I looked at each other. "But don't you like your new Barbie?" "She's having a party like you'll be having tomorrow". Our efforts to convince were unconvincing.
While Heather and I had thought of the cake in the loosest parameters of "Barbie", Josie on the other hand had a very clear plan of how she wanted her cake to be, and this poor attempt on the part of her mum and her aunt was just not meeting her standards.
"No, she has to be in the cake with a dress"
We ascertained that Josie did not in fact want a cake with a Barbie, she wanted Barbie in a cake whose dress she could eat. Her inspiration was not Alana's cake, rather Beth's from the princess party (May 2011!)
One look at Josie's face told us that this cake would not do indeed. But by now it was three o'clock and Heather had to leave at five to get to work on time, plus we would need to bake more cake and buy more icing. The pressure was on, or as we were in the kitchen I should probably say the heat was on!
Anyhow. We added two more layers of cake to the top of the square cakes. In a moment of great intelligence, I wrapped cling film around Barbie's nether regions and we removed her shoes. We then bored a hole through five layers of cake and stood Barbie in it. That damned Amazon was still too tall. We cut the square cakes into a circle (using the term very loosely and with great apologies to the circle shape) and then packed Barbie with all the cake off cuts. We rolled out the icing. Then couldn't figure out how to get it over Barbie's head (yes I know we should have removed Barbie, put it over the base and then stuck her back in - but I challenge YOU to try thinking logically under such pressure!) We made a skirt panel. We decided that might just work. We made another panel. We fixed Barbie's fondant bodice which had somehow stretched and was exposing her rather too much. We kept making and sticking panels until the skirt was covered. I rushed upstairs and, while you may find this hard to believe, found ribbon which exactly matched Barbie's bag and shoes. We wound the ribbon around the slightly unsightly seams. We added some rosebuds. We stuck pin after pin into that ribbon as if Barbie were some voodoo representation of our greatest enemy.
Now if you were to look closely (which I know you will be much too gracious to do) you may observe that Barbie lists a little too much to the right and looks like she has had one too many champagne cocktails. ( I was so tempted to accessorise her with a few wine bottles from the doll's house)
But I'm sure that you won't notice because when we summoned our harshest critic, she looked at our creation and a huge smile spread across her face.
"That's her"
Job done!
Post Script
I know also that you will look at this photo and be convinced that the fact that Barbie has rather more going on in the front of her ball gown and much less at the back was a design choice. You may also believe that her rather lopsided characteristics are caused by the force with which Josie is blowing out her candles. And for that, I thank you.
UPDATE
To see the cutting of the cake, click here
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