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Creating a Cartoon Character Doll Cake

To start off with creating your cartoon character doll cake you're going to need some materials and tools. First things first, you'll need a plain round cake that's been baked and cooled. Make sure it's not too big because you'll need to carve out the details later on.

Once you've got your cake all set up now it's time for decorating. Mark where the top of his nose sits and dampen that area with a little bit of water, then add the piece of white fondant over the top and down the front of the cake. Now straight away while that white fondant is still soft use your skewer to drag down the edge of the fondant so that it isn't a flat sort of hard line going from white to purple but instead it looks a bit more like a different colored fur blending in.

And do some more lines all the way under the chin and in the direction of the fur on all the white areas. Put some water along the lower lip there and then add a strip of deep pink along that lip line just for his bottom lip. Add your teeth into place making sure you put the bottom teeth in before the top ones because the top ones will sit in front of them.

Cut the nose out of black fondant then dampen the top of the nose area and add it into place. Once it's there just use your fingers to push it to make sure it isn't stretched out of shape just make it symmetrical and make sure it's sitting straight in the middle there. Cut out the lighter eye area and gently press that on the side there just like we did with the white piece you want to use a skewer again to give a fur texture all the way around the eye and sort of make that blend in a bit there.

Add the white of the eye and then because he is a cartoon character roll a thin snake of black and wrap it around the eye. Brush on a tiny bit of water and then put a thin snake of pink ... I'm not sure why but that just sits around the top of his eye... I can see that in the pictures so that's what we're doing.

Roll out some light brown and cut out two circles for the colored part of the eye and then make a mini ball of black and squash it right in the center of the eye for the pupil. Then using some dark brown food coloring paint some on one side going from the center of the eye to the edge. Then use some water on your brush to water it down and keep going around the eye until you've covered about three-quarters of it.

I wasteaching Matthew how to draw eyes this week and one of the things that if you don't get it right the eye won't look good is that you have to have exact circles... so if you haven't got that black pupil exactly right if it's not right in the center or if it's not a circle it's not going to look right... so just do it again before you start painting it and get the shape right first. Once you get to the last quarter of the eye just do the edge and not the center so you've got a bit of a lighter highlight in the eye there.

And now add an even tinier ball of white for the reflection in his eye because if you look at someone's eyeball if there's a light on in the room you'll see that reflecting. Cut a little bit off the bottom edge and then add that into place.

Just a loveable little dolly... okay, that's a little creepy! Roll over some pointy snakes and attach a few of them onto the cheeks just so that you've got a few hairs that are sort of sticking out and then that gives your eye just sort of the perception that the whole thing is that sort of texture.

Mix some black fondant with a little bit of water to make a paste and then use that to add some black eyebrows. If you also roll some little pointy snakes of black and purple and just curve some of them, leave some of them straight and leave them to dry at this point we can add them in later to make it look a bit more 3D but having this black underneath will make it look a bit fuller.

Use some purple food-grade dusting powder to shade the top part of the eye area and you can also use some grey to define the chin and neck area a little bit too if you want to. And use a little bit of grey on the nose just to highlight it on one side careful that you don't make him sneeze.

Add a line of white food coloring to his lip for the highlight and then just put some clean water on your brush and brush it across the white line just to soften it and do it in the direction that the lines on your lips go. Poke a hole into the top of the head and add some of the dried pointy snakes of fondant... they dry out really quickly because they're so little.

Okay, on to the ears... this is a bit I've been putting off for ages but now it's time to do them. You'll need two small circles of fondant, one slightly smaller than the other, these will be the top and bottom ears. Place them onto the head of your cake, positioning them where you think they should go.

Using a little bit of pressure push the edges of the fondant downwards into the sides of the head, this will help to give the ears some depth. You can then use a skewer or a toothpick to add in details such as ridges and bumps.

To finish off your cartoon character doll cake simply add any final touches you like. This could be something as simple as adding a few more lines here and there, or something a bit more elaborate like adding some candy eyes or a little hat.