Dye Free Birthday cake ( Dora)

My daughters birthday is sadly very stressful. This year was no exception but I made a promise that she would have a cake as pretty as everyone else's always were AND that it would be one that she could eat and enjoy without the affects of the artificial food coloring. This meant a completely dye free cake. I've done cupcakes before but I am not a baker. I had planned to have my friend ( the cake lady) bake a cake and I would go over and we would play with the icing and fondant and see what worked. A couple of days before our planned date I realized the marshmallow used for the fondant had dye in it. We then said we'd just do icing. I was okay with that until until my daughter asked me if I could make her cake. How do you, as a mom, say no to that? You don't. Again plans changed and I set out to make a cake worthy of my daughters 5 year birthday celebration. This years theme? Dora! We all know Dora. Yep, that Lil girl that runs around the jungle with a monkey and various other jungle friends and occasionally her cousin Diego. Together we looked at cakes online when she set her eyes on a Dora Princess cake where the cake is the dress. Perfect! I've actually done a Barbie cake like this for my oldest daughter. We can do this. I had the bath tub Dora that I was going to use but then found another one that I decided to use. We are well on our way now. We have the idea, the doll, and I picked up a few boxes of cake mix and some cake decorating essentials. Now to pick up our arsenal of natural dyes. I grab the beet roots as I use them for everything, then some purple cabbage. These should do it. I also grabbed some carrots, raspberries, and blueberries just in case. I arrive at my mother in laws to utilize her counter space and I get started. The first thing I do is mix and bake the dress part of the cake. I did this by pouring the mix into a well sprayed round Pyrex bowl. I then make a rectangle sheet cake for the bottom. While they bake I cut and boiled the purple cabbage. No seasoning( that will come later if you want use it for supper. We did). With the cabbage juice I made purple, blue, and surprisingly green. I drain the juice and cook it down in three pans until its just a few tablespoons of liquid. Watch carefully because it will cook out in just a second if not careful. I lost 3 pans to this fact. The one pot for purple we don't do anything to other than cook down. Its chemistry time now. To make the blue you cook it down and remove from heat and add a half teaspoon of baking soda. Stir and magically you now have a blue. I discovered the green on accident by trying to make blue. It wasn't thick enough so I cooked it some and it turned green! So to make green. Remember that last pot cooking? Add baking soda and then cook down. You should have green. Now we juice a beet root. It doesn't take much to make pink. The more you add the darker your color will be. Now we have our colors make our icing and add your colors. I wanted a really bright purple so I added the purple and a drop each of beet juice and blue cabbage juice(mixed with baking soda before cooking) I found that it's lots of trial and error and not being afraid to play with the colors. My daughter could not have been happier with the final result which meant this momma was happy too! Now for the reveal.

I found the pearls at Walmart. They are sixlet brand. Now cool and the perfect touch.

These are the cupcakes. I used each color and then mixed the left over icing to make a swirl affect.