“Everyone loves dessert.  You could be the worst cook ever but if you pull through with dessert, you will always be popular,” states Claire Thomas, food stylist, personal chef, food photographer, blogger for The Kitchy Kitchen, and couture dolly cake baker.  “I grew up always having these super wacky cakes around just because my mom is sort of an eccentric baker, as is my aunt – with both of them together, every birthday was crazy,” explains Claire Thomas as she escorts me into her kitchen at her family’s home in Brentwood.  Once we arrive, sitting on the table is a China Shop inspired dolly cake – a blonde Barbie doll with frosted blue hair wearing a ball gown that is in the process of being decorated with pieces of broken white chocolate tiles in a blue and white broken china motif.   Claire’s mother soon passed through the kitchen to which Claire affectionately exclaimed, “She’s the one who started this whole mess.”

It all began when Claire’s aunt celebrated her 60th birthday with a dolly cake that was designed to resemble her.  Having loved the idea so much, Claire had decided to make a dolly cake replica for her friend’s upcoming bachelorette party.  “I had caught a sneak peak of her wedding dress and knew how she was going to do her hair and hair piece and I set out to do a perfect replica of what she was going to look like on her wedding day,” explains Claire.  Several weeks later, Claire found herself creating a Balmain-inspired dolly cake for her sister’s birthday and alas, the fashion-forward dolly cakes were born.  Many friends at the party work in the fashion industry and could not praise the designer cake enough.  “I sort of started getting commissioned to do everybody’s birthday cakes,” states Claire.  Next, it was cakes for the girls at Who, What, Wear and then there were special requests such as a pucci cake from the Rachel Zoe team.  “I had to remake that cake 5 times because with a pucci – because of the design, if you don’t have it perfect, it doesn’t look like a pucci.”  After becoming known for her fashionable birthday cakes, and posting them all over her blog, The Kitchy Kitchen, Claire has started getting requests from other clients and the dolly cakes have taken on a life of their own.

“Girls freak out over them because it’s a Barbie in a cake,” explains Claire.  When I asked if they are indeed real Barbies, Claire confirmed.  “They do make dolly cake dolls but I choose Barbies because the face is almost more expressive and there is more make-up to mess with.”  As far as her process for selecting the prefect doll for her cake, Claire walks around Target, her holy grail of Barbies, with a photograph of the model she is doing the cake for, scanning the aisles for a plastic look-a-like.  It’s not always easy, explains Claire, to find a Barbie that looks like everyone. “I’ve had to resort to buying blonde Barbies and coloring their hair with coco powder to get light brown hair. “

“My favorite part of the process is the problem solving – thinking how do I do this?“  Claire points to the China Shop theme cake and explains, her creative process, “Like this one, I was on your website for a while thinking, OK bull in a china shop…what do I do?  Is there a bull? Is she a matador?  I love the motif on the website and I thought, I love china.  I love the look of it, so I decided to go with sort of the broken up china thing.”  Claire melted down white chocolate and painted over it with a coat of white and pearl-esscent food coloring.  She then used fine paintbrushes to create a blue and white theme onto the solid sheet of white chocolate, which she then broke up into little pieces.  The next step was to add a little flair to our Barbie by frosting the tips of her hair blue and giving her, what Claire explained as “ombre hair.”

The strangest cake she’s ever made? – A Purple Rain Prince cake for Prince’s DJ’s party.  “I used a Malibu Ken doll because Prince has very fine features.  I had to use a blonde, blue-eyed Barbie, go in and paint his pupils brown, give him the creepy facial hair with a Sharpie, and then I colored his hair black and basically gave Ken a weave.  I glued in doll hair that I found, jheri curl hair.  The ball gown ended up being the trench coat and I used coconut for his crazy ruffles.”

Words by Nicole Pajer.  Photos by Sidney Bensimon