vanilla pudding dora cake

My sweet little girl turned 6!!  She wanted a Dora cake for her family party, but I didn't want to just make a plain old box cake.  I found the recipe on my friend's blog and thought it turned out great!  It was extra moist from the pudding and sour cream and was incredibly easy to make.

As for the cake decorating, well, don't be calling the bakeries in town telling them how amazingly talented I am.  I am busy enough ;)

Vanilla pudding cake

1 box yellow or chocolate cake mix
1 (3.9 oz)  vanilla or chocolate instant pudding
4 eggs
1 cup sour cream
1/2 cup water
1/2 cup oil

Mix all ingredients until smooth. Bake at 350 for 30-35 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Cool completely and frost.
 NOTE: I obviously used the yellow cake mix with vanilla pudding variation.  I bet either would be good.

Frosting:
I used canned frosting for the cake.  I needed to make it easier on myself since I was taking up the feat of decorating.  I used Wilton gel for the food coloring (you can buy it at Hobby Lobby or any craft store really) I couldn't find my William Sonoma cake tips (HONESTLY, why can you never find things when you need them?) so I used a ziploc bag to pipe the frosting on..hence the lack of design.  For the image, I printed out a coloring page of Dora and then cut her out.  Whatever part of her I was working on, I would lay her on the cake, putting toothpicks around the image, then piped frosting inside the toothpick lines.  Yeah, it would have been easier with cake tips and a Dora cake pan, but alas, I had neither.  Hence the reason it took me 3 1/2 hours to decorate.