The Art of Creating a Masterpiece: A Step-by-Step Guide to Crafting a Cake and Decorating a Doll

As I sat down with my team, including Yolanda, Haley, and Fonda, we began brainstorming ideas for our next project. We decided to create a cake that would be the centerpiece of our gathering, and at the same time, decorate a doll that would serve as a companion piece. The doll, named Haley, would be dressed in a beautiful bustier made from fondant, which I had never used before.

I handed Yolanda the invention I had been working on, which was essentially an untested prototype. She took it with enthusiasm and began to examine it closely. "This is actually my favorite part," she said, "getting to use someone else's invention." I smiled, knowing that she was excited to get started. Next, we discussed the details of decorating Haley, including the type of texture to add to the dress and which colors to use.

As we worked on the cake, I couldn't help but feel a sense of pride in our team's creativity and skills. We were all like fairy godmothers, guiding each other through the process and offering words of encouragement. "You're like her fairy godmother now," one of my team members joked, as Haley began to take on a life of her own. With every layer of icing added, she seemed to become more confident and skilled.

As we worked on the cake, I realized that naming the doll was essential. We had been referring to her simply as "the doll" for too long. Finally, we decided to call her Haley, after our team member who had taken a special interest in her. With the name came the task of creating a top for Haley out of fondant, which I had only seen used in baking shows before.

I took a deep breath and began to mold the bustier, carefully shaping it to fit Haley's doll-like body. The process was meditative, almost therapeutic, as I worked with the soft, pliable fondant. As I cut away the thicker areas, creating a clean rectangle, I felt a sense of satisfaction with my work. The underarms and center of the bustier were left intact, while the sweetheart on the front of her chest added a touch of femininity.

With the base of the bustier complete, we moved on to decorating Haley with candy. I was amazed at how easily she took to the task, applying the sweet treats with precision and care. The result was a beautiful, colorful design that seemed to come alive as we worked.

As we finished up the cake and decorated Haley, we couldn't help but feel a sense of pride and accomplishment. The cake looked stunning, with its intricate layers and delicate decorations. And Haley, dressed in her beautiful bustier, seemed to radiate confidence and charm.

The moment of truth arrived when I placed Haley on a table, surrounded by our team members and family friends. They oohed and ahhed over the doll, marveling at the intricate details and colorful design. "This is it," one of them said. "This is the moment of truth." And as we watched, Haley seemed to come alive, her eyes sparkling with delight.

As I looked around at my team members, each one beaming with pride, I knew that this was a moment I would never forget. We had created something truly special together, a cake and doll that would serve as a testament to our creativity and teamwork. And as we celebrated, surrounded by the delicious scent of sugar and frosting, I knew that this was just the beginning of many more adventures to come.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enthere are so many people in this city who have faced cake disasters and i say no more it's time to save the cake today haley is coming and apparently she's not the greatest at caking she should be here any minute so i'm just judging let's go save the cake that was not like see i need an exit but there's a fridge here hi hi haley so nice to meet you nice to meet you too my name is haley i live in toronto ontario right downtown i go to school for fashion arts and business and i work at a cinema i wanna hear about your cake so i made my three-year-old goddaughter a cake and i stuck a doll in it okay so the cake was essentially the gown but i made it brown oh a brown gown yeah she loves chocolate so i thought why not okay all of the pictures are really embarrassing so this is the cake that i presented yeah um however it it gets a little worse as you go oh the doll looks like she had a big accident i felt scared i felt scared when she showed me the pictures yeah so it's been a while since i've tried to bake anything okay so are you thinking we should give that type of cake another go i think would be really cool to serve her yeah okay let's get started this caking takes a long time i feel like i'm a very creative person but i'm not good at executing the ideas that are going on inside of my head this is the doll we're using she has pink hair too love that she comes with a crown so you know she's ready for again i forgot mine at home yeah me me too i don't usually cake in my crown i love the pink doll because i feel like it makes me feel like i'm going to the met gala or something but in the form of a cake so these are the cakes we're using to build her gown okay so i've dyed the batter in an arm brace we've got a lot of paint going on here and we need to make sure that i hate pink and then the next thing we're going to do is we're going to cut secret chambers that's what i call them out of the cakes and this way they'll be a nice tunnel for her to fit okay so we need the help of sir squeeze have you met sir squeeze a lot no nice to meet you yeah and in here i have simple syrup which is just water and sugar in equal measure boiled together cooled and this helps to keep your cakes moist while you decorate so i'm going to show you how to use it and then you can do it if you want okay sure i'd love to okay i just go around it's okay if you get it on the table and you just shower like a layer of simple syrup okay can you do too much yeah but you just want to go around once you don't want to completely saturate it and hold him upside down and squeeze okay okay so now the good thing is while the simple syrup soaks in we can work on cutting out our chain perfect are you ready yeah you want me to measure yeah let's find the center and then so haley was really good with a ruler that's my ultimate test and i taught her how to fill and stack the cakes you never want the spatula to hit the surface of your cake okay because then all you do is scrape it you dredge up the crumbs and you get like a crummy buttercream inside it's always hard for me to watch somebody else use a spatula okay so you can use the holes ah okay so it really helps you spread and then you can bring it over to where you need it there was a little dredging but i think she did good i i get very upset when i see like a dredging see drenching i did it this feels like being in a horror movie okay so now you can clean away the excess buttercream from the side and then we can start carving her down we have to carve it yes okay um but at this point i do like to put her into the cake and that helps me see how her gown should look okay so do you want to put her in gently yeah sure oh girl those hips don't lie yeah yes all right now we're going to work on carving the cape so i'm going to show her the first few cuts and then i'm going to hand her the knife and she's got to do it okay carve away you don't want your knife to be too straight you want to remember that you're carving it down so keep it on an a line okay i really wanted to keep in mind that the dress should be sort of more narrow and tapered at the doll's waist and then fan out yolanda's starting to look a little bit concerned i'm starting to wonder if i didn't take off enough or if i took off too much is that too much that might be too much but it's okay we can turn the doll and make that the front i think she felt unsure at first but she got more confident and better as we went along oh she looks good so now i'm going to teach you how to crumb coat and chill this is crucial okay you don't know what a crumb coat and chill is neither did hayley i never knew that i had to do a crumb coat before but it actually makes so much sense a crown cotton chill is basically when you give the cake sort of a first ice but it's not about getting it really smooth it's about really icing and sticking the crumbs to the surface of the cake the crumb coat is done i'm gonna carry the cake to the fridge because i know that carrying a cake is scary i'll let her carry the cake next time so while our cake is chilling we're going to color some italian meringue buttercream in an ombre of pink so the cake is an ombre inside and out i love that the cake is going to be pink i think haley likes the idea and it's a great way to teach people how to color buttercream because essentially you just divide your buttercream into four bowls and you just dye one bowl the darkest shade of the color that you want so you can just focus on coloring one batch and then you use that color to color the rest of the buttercream in three different shades oh i love pink so much it's making me so happy what kind of pink do i want has to be the perfect shade of pink sunset pink lipstick pink cotton candy what did you say cotton candy what cloud cloud pink i think we have to say pink and typical pin i don't know about the name we came up with for the buttercream we could have done better so the next thing we need to do is put our colors one by one into a piping bag okay okay and then we're going to pipe it in layers onto our cake so you just want to make sure you always twist the top and you're holding it really tight between your thumb and your index finger the first thing i'm going to do is pipe the darkest pink buttercream starting at the bottom of the cake and you want to make sure to pipe on enough so there's enough of a layer of buttercream on the cake next we're going to use a small offset spatula to just sort of smooth that buttercream lightly and then we're going to use my invention i call it my invention but i didn't invent it it's just a piece of acetate the great thing about icing a cake with acetate is you can bend it in your hand it's the perfect tool are you comfortable doing the next three layers haley i wouldn't call it comfortable but excited that's an excellent way to look at it so we chill this layer before we do the next layer correct otherwise the butter cream will all just mix together which we don't want all right she's here my hands are shaking i am so nervous that the color that's supposed to go on top is gonna drip down and ruin the other layer of the dress that yolanda just perfectly created for me all right how's it going um you're doing good going if you have too much excess wipe it in the bowl so it doesn't fall onto the other color i think haley did a great job and now i will hand her the invention i've never let anyone else use my invention this is actually my favorite part i get to use yolanda's invention and go around and create texture to the dress i think i'll allow haley to take the cake to the fridge this time yeah i think she can do it you're like her fairy godmother now all right oh my gosh i did it okay she's in in like sand i think she's really getting confident with each icing layer which is amazing and she's practically a professional you know what i realized haley why we haven't named the doll we just keep referring to her as a doll oh yeah we gotta give her her name we damn what should we call her haley excellent excellent strategy let's call her haley so haley two yes needs a top so i think we should make her a top out of fonda okay and i was thinking a combo of pink and black my two favorite colors so haley the floor is yours the stage is yours so i have to mold this bustier i've never used fondant before i've only ever seen it on baking shows and then you can put it down on the surface okay and head to the rolling pin all right the next thing i'd suggest is to just cut away the thicker areas make yourself like a nice rectangle so we put it here yep and then just down it's okay we've got a nice clean yes and you can cut your like the underarms let's leave the two the center and line up your beautiful sweetheart on the front of her chest here it looks good it looks like a bustier and i love the design of it okay i think she looks great yeah i think we can move on and talk about decorating her with candy hold that dot i'm back with another bake you happy live tutorial tomorrow and this is a class you don't want to miss in my fun and for beginners class i'm going to teach you the ins and outs of working with fondant and how to apply it to a cake for the best results possible the class is on february 17th that's tomorrow so you can click here to sign up i really want you to do this i want you to lead the way but i'm here i don't know you can do it i'm surprised how good these look they actually look pretty good i love decorating you can be like really creative and make like a different type of pattern that'll lay on top of the other i like anything that involves creativity i think she needs some warmth you know sometimes like the party is over air conditioned you know how it is so i think we should make her a shrug so this time we've got black fondant here you go okay you want to knead the fondant and make sure all of the seams are underneath and once again we start rolling i feel like haley is the kind of doll who's going to want to make an entrance right she enters the party with her shawl on but later like when it's time to get down on the dance floor she just throws that off let's first cut off the jagged edge okay and now we can kind of pick it up and create folds okay and then what you would do is just pick it up and kind of drape it around her all right so you wanna aim there we go oh my god is that really her hold on i feel so proud of this cake it looks so good i'm so proud of haley i think it's i think it's great i think her goddaughter's gonna love it okay haley we're here this is the moment of truth you're gonna walk mini hayley down the runway or like into the other room where your family and friends are well apparently hayley has baked a cake and decorated it i'm a bit unsure i'm hoping her skills have improved and maybe she learned a few things i was only three years old when she made me the cake and i've only seen pictures but from what i've seen it was really bad i'm really excited to see the cake okay haley it's time how about i place her in your hands okay okay you want to hold the board underneath you can rest your thumbs just gently okay let's do this you've got her okay she's ready she's ready you're ready we're all ready everyone's they're not ready the doll looks so cool and i love the cake i like the decorations so much better than the last one i feel like my goddaughter has always looked up to me and now her seeing this cake seeing that i actually did something that i set my mind to it will be a good example for her as well and i think that she'll be really proud of it so this will be like a new memory for us to have together and that is how you save a cake youthere are so many people in this city who have faced cake disasters and i say no more it's time to save the cake today haley is coming and apparently she's not the greatest at caking she should be here any minute so i'm just judging let's go save the cake that was not like see i need an exit but there's a fridge here hi hi haley so nice to meet you nice to meet you too my name is haley i live in toronto ontario right downtown i go to school for fashion arts and business and i work at a cinema i wanna hear about your cake so i made my three-year-old goddaughter a cake and i stuck a doll in it okay so the cake was essentially the gown but i made it brown oh a brown gown yeah she loves chocolate so i thought why not okay all of the pictures are really embarrassing so this is the cake that i presented yeah um however it it gets a little worse as you go oh the doll looks like she had a big accident i felt scared i felt scared when she showed me the pictures yeah so it's been a while since i've tried to bake anything okay so are you thinking we should give that type of cake another go i think would be really cool to serve her yeah okay let's get started this caking takes a long time i feel like i'm a very creative person but i'm not good at executing the ideas that are going on inside of my head this is the doll we're using she has pink hair too love that she comes with a crown so you know she's ready for again i forgot mine at home yeah me me too i don't usually cake in my crown i love the pink doll because i feel like it makes me feel like i'm going to the met gala or something but in the form of a cake so these are the cakes we're using to build her gown okay so i've dyed the batter in an arm brace we've got a lot of paint going on here and we need to make sure that i hate pink and then the next thing we're going to do is we're going to cut secret chambers that's what i call them out of the cakes and this way they'll be a nice tunnel for her to fit okay so we need the help of sir squeeze have you met sir squeeze a lot no nice to meet you yeah and in here i have simple syrup which is just water and sugar in equal measure boiled together cooled and this helps to keep your cakes moist while you decorate so i'm going to show you how to use it and then you can do it if you want okay sure i'd love to okay i just go around it's okay if you get it on the table and you just shower like a layer of simple syrup okay can you do too much yeah but you just want to go around once you don't want to completely saturate it and hold him upside down and squeeze okay okay so now the good thing is while the simple syrup soaks in we can work on cutting out our chain perfect are you ready yeah you want me to measure yeah let's find the center and then so haley was really good with a ruler that's my ultimate test and i taught her how to fill and stack the cakes you never want the spatula to hit the surface of your cake okay because then all you do is scrape it you dredge up the crumbs and you get like a crummy buttercream inside it's always hard for me to watch somebody else use a spatula okay so you can use the holes ah okay so it really helps you spread and then you can bring it over to where you need it there was a little dredging but i think she did good i i get very upset when i see like a dredging see drenching i did it this feels like being in a horror movie okay so now you can clean away the excess buttercream from the side and then we can start carving her down we have to carve it yes okay um but at this point i do like to put her into the cake and that helps me see how her gown should look okay so do you want to put her in gently yeah sure oh girl those hips don't lie yeah yes all right now we're going to work on carving the cape so i'm going to show her the first few cuts and then i'm going to hand her the knife and she's got to do it okay carve away you don't want your knife to be too straight you want to remember that you're carving it down so keep it on an a line okay i really wanted to keep in mind that the dress should be sort of more narrow and tapered at the doll's waist and then fan out yolanda's starting to look a little bit concerned i'm starting to wonder if i didn't take off enough or if i took off too much is that too much that might be too much but it's okay we can turn the doll and make that the front i think she felt unsure at first but she got more confident and better as we went along oh she looks good so now i'm going to teach you how to crumb coat and chill this is crucial okay you don't know what a crumb coat and chill is neither did hayley i never knew that i had to do a crumb coat before but it actually makes so much sense a crown cotton chill is basically when you give the cake sort of a first ice but it's not about getting it really smooth it's about really icing and sticking the crumbs to the surface of the cake the crumb coat is done i'm gonna carry the cake to the fridge because i know that carrying a cake is scary i'll let her carry the cake next time so while our cake is chilling we're going to color some italian meringue buttercream in an ombre of pink so the cake is an ombre inside and out i love that the cake is going to be pink i think haley likes the idea and it's a great way to teach people how to color buttercream because essentially you just divide your buttercream into four bowls and you just dye one bowl the darkest shade of the color that you want so you can just focus on coloring one batch and then you use that color to color the rest of the buttercream in three different shades oh i love pink so much it's making me so happy what kind of pink do i want has to be the perfect shade of pink sunset pink lipstick pink cotton candy what did you say cotton candy what cloud cloud pink i think we have to say pink and typical pin i don't know about the name we came up with for the buttercream we could have done better so the next thing we need to do is put our colors one by one into a piping bag okay okay and then we're going to pipe it in layers onto our cake so you just want to make sure you always twist the top and you're holding it really tight between your thumb and your index finger the first thing i'm going to do is pipe the darkest pink buttercream starting at the bottom of the cake and you want to make sure to pipe on enough so there's enough of a layer of buttercream on the cake next we're going to use a small offset spatula to just sort of smooth that buttercream lightly and then we're going to use my invention i call it my invention but i didn't invent it it's just a piece of acetate the great thing about icing a cake with acetate is you can bend it in your hand it's the perfect tool are you comfortable doing the next three layers haley i wouldn't call it comfortable but excited that's an excellent way to look at it so we chill this layer before we do the next layer correct otherwise the butter cream will all just mix together which we don't want all right she's here my hands are shaking i am so nervous that the color that's supposed to go on top is gonna drip down and ruin the other layer of the dress that yolanda just perfectly created for me all right how's it going um you're doing good going if you have too much excess wipe it in the bowl so it doesn't fall onto the other color i think haley did a great job and now i will hand her the invention i've never let anyone else use my invention this is actually my favorite part i get to use yolanda's invention and go around and create texture to the dress i think i'll allow haley to take the cake to the fridge this time yeah i think she can do it you're like her fairy godmother now all right oh my gosh i did it okay she's in in like sand i think she's really getting confident with each icing layer which is amazing and she's practically a professional you know what i realized haley why we haven't named the doll we just keep referring to her as a doll oh yeah we gotta give her her name we damn what should we call her haley excellent excellent strategy let's call her haley so haley two yes needs a top so i think we should make her a top out of fonda okay and i was thinking a combo of pink and black my two favorite colors so haley the floor is yours the stage is yours so i have to mold this bustier i've never used fondant before i've only ever seen it on baking shows and then you can put it down on the surface okay and head to the rolling pin all right the next thing i'd suggest is to just cut away the thicker areas make yourself like a nice rectangle so we put it here yep and then just down it's okay we've got a nice clean yes and you can cut your like the underarms let's leave the two the center and line up your beautiful sweetheart on the front of her chest here it looks good it looks like a bustier and i love the design of it okay i think she looks great yeah i think we can move on and talk about decorating her with candy hold that dot i'm back with another bake you happy live tutorial tomorrow and this is a class you don't want to miss in my fun and for beginners class i'm going to teach you the ins and outs of working with fondant and how to apply it to a cake for the best results possible the class is on february 17th that's tomorrow so you can click here to sign up i really want you to do this i want you to lead the way but i'm here i don't know you can do it i'm surprised how good these look they actually look pretty good i love decorating you can be like really creative and make like a different type of pattern that'll lay on top of the other i like anything that involves creativity i think she needs some warmth you know sometimes like the party is over air conditioned you know how it is so i think we should make her a shrug so this time we've got black fondant here you go okay you want to knead the fondant and make sure all of the seams are underneath and once again we start rolling i feel like haley is the kind of doll who's going to want to make an entrance right she enters the party with her shawl on but later like when it's time to get down on the dance floor she just throws that off let's first cut off the jagged edge okay and now we can kind of pick it up and create folds okay and then what you would do is just pick it up and kind of drape it around her all right so you wanna aim there we go oh my god is that really her hold on i feel so proud of this cake it looks so good i'm so proud of haley i think it's i think it's great i think her goddaughter's gonna love it okay haley we're here this is the moment of truth you're gonna walk mini hayley down the runway or like into the other room where your family and friends are well apparently hayley has baked a cake and decorated it i'm a bit unsure i'm hoping her skills have improved and maybe she learned a few things i was only three years old when she made me the cake and i've only seen pictures but from what i've seen it was really bad i'm really excited to see the cake okay haley it's time how about i place her in your hands okay okay you want to hold the board underneath you can rest your thumbs just gently okay let's do this you've got her okay she's ready she's ready you're ready we're all ready everyone's they're not ready the doll looks so cool and i love the cake i like the decorations so much better than the last one i feel like my goddaughter has always looked up to me and now her seeing this cake seeing that i actually did something that i set my mind to it will be a good example for her as well and i think that she'll be really proud of it so this will be like a new memory for us to have together and that is how you save a cake you\n"