How To Make A Barbie Cake

Image © nomadsoul1, under a Creative Commons license.

A Barbie cake is a guaranteed show stopper for your kid's birthday party!

A Barbie cake has a doll in the middle (which can be an extra birthday treat!) with the skirt of her gown made out of yummy cake.

It may seem pretty daunting to make a Barbie doll cake but do not worry, we have a foolproof, delicious yet absolutely gorgeous recipe so that your kid can have a Barbie birthday.

This article ensures that making a Barbie princess birthday cake is easy peasy. We have got all the information on what you will need to make a Barbie princess doll cake in this step by step guide, including tips, allergy alternatives and extra information.
 

Ingredients

For The Cake: 250g butter, 250g caster sugar, 4 large eggs, 250g self raising flour, 125g all purpose flour. Alternatively, save time by using your favourite cake mix and follow the instructions on the packet.

For The Icing: 100g softened butter, 380g icing sugar,  2 tbsp warm water, red/pink food colouring.

Decorations: Small fondant flowers, pink sprinkles/edible glitter, pink dragées. All are optional, decorate as you wish.

Equipment: Large oven friendly mixing bowl, (optional) electrical mixer, rubber spatula, piping bag, piping (star) tip.

Extras: Food grade plastic wrap, and of course a barbie doll!

Image © melikeakyol, under a Creative Commons license.

Method

Here is a step by step recipe on how to make a Barbie doll cake. The process can take around 90 minutes and makes around 20 servings.

Before you start baking, it is a good idea to make sure your Barbie is cleaned and prepped. Wrap the lower half of the Barbie with plastic and tape it up around her waist. You can also brush and tie the doll's hair back so it doesn't get in the way of the frosting.

Bake The Cake:

1. Preheat the oven to 180C/350F.

2. Cream the butter with the sugar until light and fluffy.

3. Add each egg one at a time and beat until smooth.

4. Sift the flours and mix them together. Add your wet ingredients into the flour and fold until mixed well.

5. Pour your cake into the bowl and bake for 40 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean.

6. Put the cake to one side until fully cooled.

7. Place the cooled cake on a cake board with the large side down. Use a narrow and sharp kitchen knife to carve out a hole that is deep enough so that Barbie is inside the cake up to her waist. You can also trim around the cake to make your desired skirt shape.

8. Move the doll's arms up so it doesn't mess up the cake and insert your Barbie into the cake. 
 

Prepare The Icing:

1. Beat the butter and water until smooth and creamy.

2. Add your icing sugar bit by bit and continually fold into the mixture.

3. Separate the icing into thirds, with two thirds for pink icing and one third for white.

4. To make the pink icing, add red/pink food colouring and mix until your desired shade. 
 

Image © abushue319, under a Creative Commons license.

Ice The Princess Barbie Cake:

1. Using a rubber spatula, smooth on a layer of pink icing around the cake.

2. Let this set in the fridge for 20 minutes before adding piping and other decorations.

3. Use a piping bag to pipe pink and white stars around the cake to make the frills on Barbie's dress.

4. Use some pink dragées around Barbie's waistline to neaten up the boundary between Barbie and the bottom of her gown.

5. Finally, use edible sprinkles, glitter, fondant flowers or other cake decorations on her dress as you want.

Final Touches: Adjust Barbie's arms, brush through her hair and add on any accessories to the top half of her body and head. Now you have a beautiful and elegant Barbie doll cake!

Tips And Tricks

We also have a few tips for you to make the barbie birthday cake go as smoothly as possible.

Whilst our recipe has used pink icing, you can choose whatever colour you want using different food colouring. For example, want to make a blue barbie dress? Go for it!

If you want your barbie to have a taller skirt, a quick and easy fix is to make an extra cake out of some store-bought mix in a 9-inch cake tin. Then, place the bowl-shaped cake on top of this and trim around the skirt to smooth before decorating.

You can also make the skirt using a bundt pan, so you don't have to carve the middle. If your pan is shallow, you can layer a couple of cakes for a taller skirt.

For Special Dietary Requirements

Many people have different diets and it is certainly possible to cater for that because there are so many substitutes that are easily available. Here are some examples:

For dairy free options, you can use mashed banana instead of egg and coconut oil in place of butter.

To make a gluten free cake try using oat flour or almond flour.

Many health stores and even supermarkets sell vegan icing and edible decorations.

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Good To Know

Young bakers can definitely messy their fingers and help make your Barbie cake. Kids aged between two and five can help stirring ingredients, it is a great way to get them exciting about cooking. Older kids can have a more active role by following the method and measuring each ingredient.

This cake is good for all ages. In fact, kids as young as one can eat the birthday cake.

The cake can be stored in room temperature for a few days. Just keep it in an airtight container to keep it fresh.

Alternatively, the Barbie cake can be stored in the fridge (up to two weeks) or frozen (up to two months). Just wrap it in a couple of layers of food-grade plastic.