So a customer sent me a picture of a cake she wants for her son's birthday.  It's called a doodle cake and here is a picture of it. 

When I read about this type of cake, the decorating is done by the child on a white fondant covered cake.  The customer wants ME to do all of the decorating on the cake with this same messy, kid writing effect.

I am stuck on so many levels with this cake.  I can't figure out how to approach the design and execute something that will look professional yet done by a child.  I don't want to just scribble on a fondant covered cake with markers.  I usually cover my cakes in buttercream and decorate with fondant pieces.  Do you think I could go this same route??  Anyone have any ideas on how you would do this cake? Thanks!

Not sure if the picture came through.  Here is the link to it.

RevFullRain540.jpg

Also, I forgot to add that this will be a 2-tiered cake. 

AI've done a similar cake to this for my husband. My daughter did most of the doodling. We covered a cake with fondant and used americolour pens, it was easy, the pens worked really well. I don't know how you'd do it another way though.[IMG]http://cakecentral.com/content/type/61/id/3216007/width/200/height/400[/IMG]

she should let you cover it in fondant, then let her kid draw all over it with edible markers.

AThe only way you could make this work with buttercream would be to draw on white edible image icing sheets with edible markers and cut them to fit your cake,and wrap your cake with them and cut one in a circle for the top.

You could write on fondant pieces and cut them out, but the cake in the picture is fondant with color writers on it, which is what the customer seems to want.  If you try to do it with buttercream she might be disappointed in how it looks.

Do you have access to little kids…have them come over and draw on the cake.  It can be your little secret…

I agree with everyone ---cover in fondant and draw on it with food color markers. I would ask her for a drawing from her child and you mimic that on the fondant. 

Thanks everyone for all of your advice and help.  All def worth considering!!  This is definitely a cake that has me out of my comfort zone and will be a challenge for me.  Honestly, I'm afraid my doodling work will turn out too nice n pretty and not kid-like and messy.  And I only get one shot to get it right.  Eek! That's intimidating too!  And I wish I could just allow my kids to contribute their artwork but since it's for a customer, I can't.  If I end up doing this cake, I will post the result.  Thanks again!!

You are over thinking this. Just google kid's doodles and copy some of them.

ASilbella, instead of letting your kids loose on the customers cake, could you make a plain iced cake, let them decorate that and copy it onto the customers cake? Then the kids get to eat the test cake- win, win! Honestly it's the easiest cake I've ever made.

When I checked your website and saw such lovely work, I knew this wouldn't be a challenging cake for you.

AUse your non dominant hand to do the decorating.

ANow that is an excellent idea!

You could just send it to me and I'll draw on it for you!  I guarantee, people will believe it was done by a child lol.  

Lol!

So I wanted to share the result/my version of a doodle cake.  I stuck with covering in fondant and drawing right on the cake.  I used a combo of edible markers and painting. I wanted a little dimension so the family and name are done with fondant pieces.

I did find it a little difficult to draw on the cake with my hand up in the air and not resting on anything which ended up being a good thing because that helped my drawings look more kid-like!  

I was still very nervous up until the customer picked this up because it's so unlike anything I normally do but she was happy and it was exactly what she wanted so win-win!

Thanks again everyone for all of your input and help.  CC is the best!   

AAw it's lovely. :-)

AI think it looks great!