My daughter loves pink and purple and Abby Cadabby so I decided to use her as the theme for my daughter’s 4th birthday party this year. I used the format and design idea from another Abby Cadabby Birthday Cake I saw on this website: Abby Cadabby Cake 2 by Alexxis (Massillon, OH). The tips and ideas posted by Alexxis helped me get started with my own cake. This is the third character cake I have made (I have also made Elmo and Hello Kitty), but this cake was made completely free hand without a template or a cake mold. I used the photo posted by Alexxis and a picture from my daughter’s coloring book as my references for Abby’s face and her details.
Like Alexxis, I also set my cake up similar to Mickey Mouse and used 3 cakes – one for the face and one for each pom pom pigtail. I used 8″ round cake pans and made a double layer white cake with a chocolate frosting filling. To save time, I did use store bought frosting and ended up using approx. 3 1/2 tubs of vanilla and 1 tub of chocolate. I used the Wilton concentrated gel to mix the colors, except for the black that I bought in a tube. I used 8 colors in all: pink, dark pink, blue, yellow, white, light purple, dark purple and black.
To make the cake, I cut the tops off of 3 of the 6 rounds to have a flat surface to serve as the bottom layer. I left the 3 top layers in the dome shape from the oven to give contour and visual depth to the characters face and pigtails. I layered the cakes and set them up in the character shape and used a bread knife to carve each shape. I then froze the cakes over night (you can freeze them for only an hour or two.)
To decorate, I removed all the cakes from the freezer and added the chocolate frosting filling. I then returned all 3 layered cakes to the freezer to let the filling become firm. That way I could avoid accidentally transferring the chocolate frosting to the outer white frosting as I decorated. Freezing also helps prevent crumbs from getting mixed into the frosting as you spread it. I chose to start with the face cake and returned the 2 remaining pigtail cakes in the freezer after I determined the placement of the entire cake on my board. Once I had the face cake completely finished, I then removed the pigtail cakes from the freezer and frosted them.
Once I had the cakes baked and carved, it took me about 6 – 6 1/2 hours to decorate the cake. However, this time could have been reduced some if I had the proper decorating tools. I only used a butter knife, a box of toothpicks, a few Ziploc bags and 4 plastic cake tips because that is all I currently own. I would definitely recommend using proper tools to speed up the process and help with the detailing, but they are not absolutely essential.
The main cake tip I used was the standard writing tip. I did use a leaf tip for the black eye lashes and then formed them with a toothpick. I tried to mix my dark purple, light purple, and pink in the same bag as suggested by Alexxis, but that method didn’t work for me and resulted in mixing the colors together and changing the color of my dark purple. Luckily, I had set aside the rest of the frosting so I just used a butter knife to spread on the dark purple frosting and then added and swirled in the pink and light purple frosting and a little dark pink to create the highlight effect of Abby’s hair.
We had 18 people at the party (10 were kids) so we had more than enough cake – we ended up having one entire pigtail and about 1/4 of the face left over. My daughter loved the cake and it was a big hit for the party.
You did a Beautiful job on this cake, my daughter is turning two and loves Abby! I have only been able to find the body of Abby cake pan for sale.. And i don’t even know if i could decorate that. but your cake i
turned out PERFECT. that is how i would like mine to be. so wish i had the talent to do that!!
Thanks for your comments :) I had never tried to make a cake like this before without a pan, so you should give it a try! You might surprise yourself at what you can do.
Hi – I have minimal experience with cakes and decorating, but I know my biggest problem is the crumbs in the icing. Great tip to freeze the cake for a few hours. How far in advance can you make the cake and decorate it? I have my daughter’s party on a Saturday, I’d love to bake and decorate it on that Thursday. Think that’s possible without it tasting stale? Thanks so much!