Princess birthday cake - some advice please on how to go about it

[deaconblue]

Am going to make a princess cake for dd's 3rd birthday. I've bought a doll with a spike instead of legs to be the princess' top half (dd quite alarmed when I took that out of a bag) and plan to make the skirt/cake using a pirex pudding basin.
My questions are:
do I make just a normal victoria sponge recipe or would you go for madeira?
cut in half and put buttercream and jam in the middle or am I risking collapse?
Do you put the fondant icing bodice on the naked doll before or after sticking her into the cake?

plus any top tips for avoiding disaster gratefully received.

Definitely use madeira cake recipe. Much firmer and easier to cut than Victoria sponge. It will be fine if you cut in half and fill with buttercream and jam.

I personally would make the bodice on the doll first to minimise interfering with the cake. You could always tidy it up after you've stuck it in.

HTH

thanks that helps loads. Am really looking forward to attempting it, I usually do flat cakes.

I searched on youtube and watched lots of people doing it which gave me loads of ideas I wouldn't have thought of.