How to make a Dolly Varden Cake

I know that some of you out there don't know what a dolly varden cake is, but I was asked to make one for a 21st birthday.  Of course I said that I could make it, even though I hadn't made one before.  How hard could it be?  Obviously it ended up taking far longer than I thought, so I decided that I would share some of my tips with you.

This is the version that I made.  There are far easier and far more difficult versions to make, but the birthday girl got to choose what she would like.  The dolly varden itself is a doll 'pick' (so just the top half of the doll) inserted into a mud cake (the tin took the mix of a 23cm tin), and the bottom layer is a 28cm round mud cake.  So it was pretty heavy by the time I finished all of those layers of fondant.  It was made to serve 50 people for dessert.

I have found it quite difficult to work out portion sizes - most sources that I have found have indicated very small pieces of cake.  My guess for this one was that a 28cm round would serve 30ish people for dessert, and a 23cm round mix would serve 20ish.  Does anyone out there have suggestions?

Anyway, back to the decorating.  I watched a couple of youtube clips and read some sites to glean information.  Here are the most useful tips that I discovered:

1.  Using a dolly varden tin: I usually line my tins when making mud cake, but I couldn't work out a way to line this one due to its dome shape (I tried, but gave up after about half an hour of failed attempts).  Instead I sprayed the inside with cooking spray and sprinkled flour in it as well until it was entirely covered, and just lined the base with baking paper.  I was also concerned about the outside of the cake cooking before the middle, as it's quite a deep tin, so I lined the outside of the tin with newspaper.  The cake came out really well and didn't stick at all.  Also, be careful as this is a really unsteady tin.  I have heard about cooking disasters where the cake tipped over and cooked in the bottom of the oven, so be careful if you use one.  I got my hubbie to hold the sides of the tin while I spooned in the mixture, and then sat the tin on a biscuit tray before putting onto the oven rack. This seemed to work pretty well.

2.  Making the fondant bodice:  Next time I make this, I will take photos as I go along so that my descriptions are a little easier to follow.  The best tip that I found for attaching the fondant top, was to cover the doll's head and hair with cling wrap before you start so that it doesn't get all sticky.  Then cut out a long rectangle (~7cm wide) from fondant so that you can make the bodice.  It sticks easily with a little sugar water.  Leave the doll aside to dry while you make the skirt.  Once the fondant has dried, take off the cling wrap and try to do something with the doll's hair.  It is much easier to brush before the doll goes into the cake!

3.  Making the skirt:  This was the part that took the longest.  First cover the whole cake with fondant so that you maintain the shape and freshness of the cake, and let this layer set overnight. 

The pleats:  To make the pleats in the skirt, roll twelve fondant 'logs' which are ~1cm in diameter at one end and gradually taper to a point.  My fondant logs were ~13cm long - just measure the height of your cake to know how long to make them.  Attach these logs to the cake with a little sugar water, placing the tapered end up (spaced evenly around the cake).  The wider your logs are, the more bouffant your skirt will become.

The layers:  I took a bit of a guess about the layered skirt effect, but rolled the fondant ~0.5cm thick and cut out a large circle, using the base of the dolly varden tin as a guide (none of my circle cutters were large enough).  I then cut a smaller circle in the middle using a circle cutter and split one edge of the circle so that it would fit around the bottom of the cake.  This is the bottom layer of the skirt.  I attached this with sugar water, and then repeated the process for the next layer.   The top layer was a similar process, but I needed a much larger circle of fondant, and so I used a dinner plate as a guide.  This allowed plenty of fondant to create the pleats in the skirt. 

The dress:  The next step was to put the doll in the top of the cake, and make the purple sash so that it all looked like one dress.

4.  Putting the cake together: I covered the bottom cake and board with fondant, and let them dry overnight before putting the two cakes together.  Make sure that you remember to add support/dowels to the bottom layer so that the heavy cake on top doesn't sink or make the whole thing collapse.

5.  The piping:  I really need to practise my piping skills some more.  I find it quite difficult, and really didn't want to ruin all of my hard work with terrible piping.  So I piped the writing on a layer of fondant, and when I was happy with it (6 attempts later) I attached the layer of fondant to the cake.

So, all of that is probably really confusing without photos, but I hope that some of the ideas help if you are trying a dolly varden cake.

-N-