Dee Dee Doodlebop

So this past September a friend asked if I would be able to make a Dee Dee Doodlebop cake for her daughter's fourth birthday. My first question was "Dee Dee who?" But I agreed and asked what she would like me to do. She said that her daughter really wanted a cake with Dee Dee Doodlebop's face on it.

After I Googled and You Tubed the Doodlebops, I was not confident that I could pull off this face on a cake. Especially a face that was human and had only a little cartoon-like quality. Creating a likeness of a character is a difficult thing to do. Too many times characters like this look nothing like what they are supposed to, and this is what I was afraid of. So I asked my friend if we could do something else, and she gave me a few other ideas, but I kept thinking about ways that I might be able to make that face. It is after all what her daughter wanted.

I remember not being able to sleep well that night because I was thinking so much about how I could make this face! I decided that I could probably pipe it on the cake using a gel transfer (the image is traced onto wax paper using clear gel and then transferred directly onto the cake where the outline can be piped in icing) and told my friend I would give it a try. So we decided that the face would go on an 8" purple top tier that was sitting offset on a 10" pink cake. Around the bottom tier would be a keyboard (Dee Dee is the band keyboard player).

During the planning stage of this cake I had the opportunity to talk with a fellow cake maker and she asked if I had considered doing a buttercream transfer. She explained that the image would be traced in layers with buttercream and frozen so the buttercream could be peeled off the wax paper and be placed onto the cake. This seemed way too complicated, but I decided to research this technique to see if it might be a better option. It was. Less room for failure with this type of transfer since I could actually practice!

If I'm honest, I'm not sure I love how the face turned out, but it sure looks better than I had ever imagined! I do love the bouffant (molded out of cereal treats and covered in fondant) and headband, and really like the way the keyboard turned out. The face isn't perfect, but it sort of looks like Dee Dee, and my friends little girl loved it. And that's really what matters!