

Natural Cooking Club celebrates togetherness as of society of culinary lovers with extravaganza barbie doll competition, held in Jakarta, Indonesia yesterday. Since I have become a member for 8 years now (and will always be), I have an urge to participate on my own way from my New Zealand kitchen.
And, so I decided to make my own barbie doll cake. My first one, honestly.
I have got no clue how to bake, let alone, decorate a barbie doll. Thoughts come cross my mind, of how I am going to do it, in spite of such an inexperience baker in handling such delicate work.
Oh, well. I have a promise and I hate to break it. So I go on. Here's what I do. I am sending this to Michelle of Greedybread for Sweet New Zealand event, initiated by Alessandra Zecchini.
Dark
Chocolate Leather
I
tripled this recipe, making sure I got sufficient dough to cover the
whole dress, and a little more for half body. I used Whittakers' 72%
dark chocolate for the dark modelling paste, and Valrhona Ivoire
Coverture for the white modelling paste.
Source: Wedding
Cakes from Start to Finish, by Elaine MacGregor
155g
liquid glucose
185g
melted chocolate
Pour
in the warmed liquid glucose into a bowl of melted chocolate. Stir
until thickens, and it will move away from the sides of the bowl. Tip
it out onto a well greased work bench. Knead thoroughly until it's
smooth and leathery. Cover and keep in the fridge until ready to use.
I
made chocolate roses firsthand before moving on to make gluten-free
chocolate cake. I do have photos of molding the roses on my account
on Twitter or Facebook if you care to look. I don't post it to
Flickr, though. But it's easy enough to make roses, so I don't think
you need a tutorial for that.
Gluten-Free
Chocolate Cake
I
takes two cakes to fill in this tin of barbie cake from Wilton. It is
called WonderMold Pan.
I bought it from The Cake Shop in Pukekohe. I just greased and
floured the cake tin before baking, no baking paper involved (and it
handwash easy too).
The
mixture fills about ¾ of the tin. It springs fine to the top of the
tin and it is perfectly level when it's baked.
185g
margarine
1
¼ cup caster sugar
4
eggs
2
cups gluten-free flour sifted with 50g Varlhona cocoa powder and 1
tsp baking soda
½
cup almond meal
150g
melted dark chocolate, cooled
2
tsp vanilla essence
Preheat
the oven to 165C. Beat margarine and sugar until pale and fluffy. Add
in eggs one at a time. Beat in melted and cooled dark chocolate. Add
in vanilla essence. Beat a little bit more and turn the mixer off.
Fold in the flour mixture, and then almond meal, mix gently well.
Pour
into the cake tin and bake for 1 hour or until the skewer comes out
clean when inserted from the centre of the cake. Leave in the tin for
5 minutes and transfer the cake, the wider side down, and let cool.
Cream
Cheese Buttercream
250g
cream cheese, room temperature
60g
icing sugar, sifted
1
tsp vanilla essence
juice
from half lemon
Beat
the cream cheese until smooth. Beat in the icing sugar, vanilla and
lemon juice together, until the mixture is soft and fluffy. Use this
to sandwich and cover the barbie cake.
Assemble
I
divide the cake into 4 layers and sandwich them with buttercream,
then cover the sides of the cake with it. Leave it in the fridge
until the buttercream hardened a little bit.
Then
the tricky part is coming. To roll this mass of chocolate is one hell
of a baker job, especially when your kitchen is heating up with sun
poking mixed with the heat of the oven and stove (as I was cooking
dinner as well).
It
did not go quite as I expected. It could not roll out thinly as I
wanted it. Whenever I try to roll it out thinly, it breaks. I decided
to just leave it thicker and forget that paper thin layers I had in
mind. There is always a plan B in this life, don't you think?
I
worked on it in batches. Front part of the dress has to be fitted
first. That one is then pressed with sunflower pattern to make a
rather unplained dress. And then I work around the cake, a little at
a time (while handling chicken satay on the grill!). The overlapping
sheets of chocolate leather is then made to make a resemblance of the
flow of the gown.
After
I feel that things going on smoothly, it is time to decorate the
other half of the barbie. I use a little bit of the chocolate leather
on the chest and around, and use my scalpel to form a top dress.
Then
the barbie top is inserted in the hole. From there, I worked on to
glue the roses one at a time while eyeing on the balance. So, there
it is.
My
first barbie cake. I don't know what to feel. I completely am not
satisfied, for I thought I could do better than that, but for a first
try, I did okay. Don't you think?
The Review
We have this cake for morning tea over at my mother-in-law's place. I was quite pleased to see the cake was still moist and tasted really good.
The buttercream went well with the cake. The chocolate leather, though, was not a pick. It tasted rather sweeter to us surprise. But the white chocolate roses taste better. I wonder if the quality of chocolate does make a difference? Who knows. I am already ordered to make this cake again for someone's birthday next, so I have more opportunity to play around with different design. Have you made yours?