Cake making is not for the faint hearted, or the heat.

So my sister always makes the cake in our family. And her cake takes the cake. Seriously. she has made me a Women's Weeklycake every year since I was about 16 and she still makes me one every year. In fact she makes the whole family cakes every year and now that we have two nephews she is going to be doing it for a long while. Nonetheless a friend of mine's niece turned on in late November and I (drunkenly) offered to make the cake. How hard could it be? Well. As it turns out, not that hard but it was time consuming, frustrating but also fun and totally worth it. The firs thing I needed was a cake board. My sister always buys the fancy ones, specifically for cakes and such however I got a man friend to cut up some ply wood, then I adhesived some foil to it(two layers) with spray adhesive and it was as good as any expensive one you can buy.

So the next thing to do was borrow the icing kit thing (thanks jo) and by the ingredients for my white chocolate mud cake. I just used a basic recipe and added more chocolate than they said. I used the dolly varden tin(again, thanks jo) and whipped up the cake. Once finished and cooked it made it's way to the cake board. I also made a simple round cake a well as some cupcakes - not sure how many people the cake was for.

At this point this is what I had

Once the doll was in I must admit to wrapping her head and face in glad wrap BUT it was only to protect her flowing hair.

Next came the icing. I used a base of Butter cream - thanks Women's Weekly and then piped meringue frosting on top.

At this point, she got excited and threw up her arms. I went with two icings mainly cause you can never have too much icing but also because that nice pink shines through---pretty.

The icing was going well but so was the heat. At this point the house was up to about 25 degrees or more IN THE HOUSE.

Before I finished her we set up a cardboard ghetto in our 'cooler' spare room. We then crossed our fingers, made alternate arrangements for transport involving air conditioning and hoped to hell.

So we made it. Bless our air conditioned chariot- we made it. As a final touch I decided to blow torch the tips of the meringue, which was awesome however it may have been a poor idea coupled with the horrendous heat. Before making her debut she required a make shift cool room to slow the melting process but all in all we made it and baby Charlie got her cake. To be honest, I think Gaga should take note, new outfit anyone???