How I Uncracked the Crack “Under Pressure”

A few days before my daughter’s birthday do, I started making the Dora figurine for her cake.  I used fondant, and when I searched the internet, there weren’t too many samples to refer to.  Most of the Dora cakes used a plastic Dora figurine plonked on top of the cake or a 2-D design with Dora’s picture flat on the cake.  So the only thing I used for reference was a little Dora soft toy.

My plan was to finish the figurine before picking the kids up, however I had underestimated the time I would need to roll out the fondant to the shade of Dora’s skin.  That took me a while, and before I knew it I had to abandon my project midway, with a faceless and hairless Dora:

Unfortunately, I forgot the rules for storing fondant figurines in advance.  I left the little Dora-wannabe out in the open, supposedly to “air-dry” and when I went back to work on it later that night, I found cracks all over the little poor thing!

Apparently, Dora had cracked under pressure…SIGH.

Instinctively, I used some water to try to cover up the cracks, but when it dried it became worse.  A quick search in the internet revealed that water was NOT to be used to cover up cracks in fondant, in fact I should have used vegetable shortening!!  Immediately I tried some shortening on the cracked area and they “healed” almost instantly.

Alas, it was too late to save the whole figurine and I decided to redo the figurine the next day.

This time I was careful to place little Dora in a covered container with a little bit of air for ventilation.

Airtight containers aren’t recommended because condensation might form when the cover is opened, so I used clingwrap film on top of the container and punched a few tiny holes at the top.  Whenever I could I would put the container in an air-conditioned environment, and yes, the container slept in the same room with us at night 🙂  Our air-conditioner is not on the whole night, but might as well make full use of it while we can! 🙂

Hannah had also wanted Boots, so I made a small Boots figurine too.

The night before the party, I hand painted the facial features with food coloring.  On hindsight, I should have used white fondant for the eyes, but I was pressed for time.

Mine was actually a chubbier version of Dora, and even though I placed the figurine on the cake using a few sticks of uncooked spaghetti, it looked like it was leaning farther and farther back, so I had to prop Dora up with a “fondant mountain”. LOL

I’m pretty pleased with the cake, but I need to do some research on how to craft slimmer figurines in future! hahaha….

Most importantly, I had a blast creating this cake…I just might make it an annual affair now, since I’ve already done it 2 years in a row! 🙂