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This Barbie cake is every little girl’s dream! This recipe works for any size Barbie or Princess doll and is very fun to make!
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Birthday Barbie Cake
Barbie birthday cakes were all the rage when we were little girls. We each had at least one birthday when our mom made us a sparkly Barbie doll cake with our favorite new Barbie doll. It was a perfect gift and cake in one. Now that Disney princesses are all the rage, and the Disney princess dolls are a similar size, you can make the same kind of cake with a favorite princess. The little princess in your life will adore it and you’ll be the hero of any party!
How to Make a Barbie Cake Skirt
- Find your “molds”. The “skirt” of the cake is baked in one or two 8″ cake pans and an oven-safe glass bowl (or two glass bowls, one medium-sized and one small sized). That’s all you’ll need for the base of the cake, or the skirt. Get creative with what you have. Just make sure the bowls you are using are oven safe. A ceramic or stoneware mixing bowl will work great. The size of cake will fit any Barbie-size princess doll or Barbie doll.
- Make and bake the cakes. Mix two box mixes of cake mix (you can mix and match or use all one flavor, totally up to you. Following the directions in the recipe card below, bake cake according to package instructions. To avoid sticking, grease or butter your pans and then lightly dust with flour before adding the batter. Tip: Use any excess batter to make cupcakes
- Cool and flip. About 10 minutes after removing from the oven, flip the round cakes and/or bowls over and release the cakes from the pans and/or bowls. You may need to gently slip a knife around the edges to loosen, and then invert onto a wire cooling rack. This way the cakes can finish cooling and you will avoid the cake sweating and sticking to the bowl.
- Stack the layers. Stack the cakes one on top of the other, with the larger one on the bottom, then trim off the excess to make a full skirt. You may want to cut the cakes in half horizontally and add frosting in between the layers to add more height.
- Freeze and frost. I usually like to wrap the whole cake in plastic wrap and pop it in the freezer overnight after it has cooled. This makes it so much easier to frost later on. Insert doll into the top of the cake (you may want to use a knife to cut a hole the width of the Barbie doll if it is still fairly frozen) and decorate
How to Decorate a Barbie Cake
Once the cakes are completely chilled, take your Barbie or princess doll (undressed) and stick her legs into the middle of the cake. Then decorate her bodice and skirt however you like. To make things easier on yourself, get a doll where the bodice is painted on. Then the only part you need to decorate is the “skirt” part.
Don’t let the frosting of this cake intimidate you. We made this basic 4-ingredient, 10-minute fondant recipe, colored it bright pink, and draped it over the cake. We used a small decorating tip to pipe some buttercream “pearls” on the dress and kept it very simple. You can add ribbon, icing, sprinkles, or any other edible decorations you like!
What Frosting is Best?
I love using fondant or our homemade buttercream frosting when I am decorating cakes with beautiful detail like these princess cakes. Fondant is great to get the smooth, flowy look. Buttercream frosting holds its shape well and it is easy to pipe so you can do all kinds of fun designs for your Barbie birthday cake. You will want about 6-7 cups of frosting to cover your cake if you are wanting to pipe the entire cake. This allows for some extra for dividing and color mixing.
Tips for Decorating a Barbie Cake
- Clip up the doll’s hair or any accessories while decorating.
- Lightly frost the cake before piping or decorating. This is called a “crumb coat”. It adds strength to the cake once the decorating icing is applied and keeps unwanted crumbs from being seen.
- Use a cake plate or lazy Susan when decorating. This will make it easier to turn while piping.
- Separate your frosting into bowls, color with food coloring, then cover with a damp cloth until ready to use so the frosting doesn’t dry out.
- Practice piping on wax paper until you get comfortable creating your designs. Here is a great post on some simple piping techniques to try.
- Use gel food coloring from the craft store. These types of food coloring are far superior to the water food coloring at the grocery story. You will get brighter colors and the perfect tint to match your princess.
- Get creative with decorations! You can use sprinkles or any shape or size, piping gels, or any other fun sugary ingredients you can find.
More Barbie Cake Decorating Ideas
Disney Elsa Barbie Cake
For the Elsa Barbie doll birthday cake we used a Barbie that had a painted on body and a skirt (instead of a full dress). This made it super easy to decorate. We mixed Sky Blue and Lavender food coloring to get the right colors. We kept adding color a drop at a time until it matched Elsa’s bodice colors.
For the skirt, we did 2 colors. The top color was more heavy on the blue and the bottom was heavier on the lavender color. To get the “ombre” look, we filled one pastry bag with the blue, another one with the purple and then put BOTH bags (no tips in either bag) in one bag with the star tip. That way the two colors combined without mixing too much. It gave it more of a swirled look.
We used a star tip to make the “swirls”. We alternated the direction of each swirl to give it more interest. You could also probably do rosettes and it would look beautiful. We finished off the look with pearl sprinkles and sparkly snowflake foam stickers (of course, we removed the stickers before eating).
Disney Rapunzel Cake
For the Rapunzel cake, we mostly piped little flowers using a star tip. We used a flat tip for the ribbon on the front of the dress and a larger star tip for the “shell” looking border along the bottom.
More Delicious Birthday Cake Recipes
There’s nothing more I love in life than a slice of beautiful, luscious, moist birthday cake. Use a box cake mix (like in the recipe below) or try making your cake from scratch using one of our homemade cake recipes:
How to Make a Barbie Birthday Cake
How to Make a Barbie Cake
Video
Equipment
- 8 inch Baking Pan
- Mixing Bowls
- Hand Mixer
Ingredients
- 1 cake mix made according to package directions
- 1 Barbie or Barbie-sized Princess Doll
- 1 recipe fondant
Instructions
- In a large bowl, make up cake batter.. *Optional – for a more dense and moist cake substitute half of the water for the same amount of sour cream.Grease and flour a medium-sized and small glass oven-safe bowl (see notes above). Spray bowls with cooking spray (or grease with butter) and dust lightly with flour. Turn upside-down and tap the bowls to get rid of excess flour.
- Fill with batter until they are a little over ¾ full. Use remaining batter for cup cakes.Bake at 325 for about an hour or until the center feels set (checking after 30 minutes).
- About 10 minutes after you remove the cake from the oven, turn out of bowls onto parchment paper. This prevents the cake from sweating and sticking to the bowls.Stick the cakes in the freezer for a few hours or overnight until they are firm. Layer the small cake onto the large cake and trim any over hang.
- Stick your Barbie in the center of the cake and layer with a thin layer of frosting to create a "crumb coat" for the fondant to stick to.
- Make fondant (see link above) and carefully place over the cake. Make little folds if desired or keep it straight and flush to the cake.
- Decorate with more fondant, piped frosting (optional), or cake decorations.
Notes
- Nutrition represents a standard white cake mix with fondant or buttercream frosting. Nutritional values of other flavors may vary.
- Use extra cake batter to make cupcakes to place around the cake for extra decoration.
The frosting effect is called ombré (French for “shaded”), not hombre (Spanish for “man”). Hope that helps!
Thanks for catching that typo for us!😂 We fixed it!
Could you give a link to which doll you used in this cake? So pretty! I’m assuming she’s a Rapunzel doll but I couldn’t find the exact one. Want to make this cake for my daughter’s birthday.
It has been a long time since we made this cake, I don’t know if they sell that specific doll anymore. But any Rapunzel Barbie doll will work!
Love it sweetheart
These are so fun! I remember when I was little my mom made one for me one year. I don’t have any little girls of my own, but I love this recipe and will pass it on to my friends with girls. <3
very cool!! My friend’s daughter would love this princess cake.
This is such a showstopper for any birthday party! I love this idea.
I’m going to make it for my granddaughter last time I made one was for my mother she was 80 years old. And she use to make them for my birthday I still have the cake doll with real hair she used .
Wow, this cake looks amazing! Unfortunately, only boys in my family but I am definitely showing it to my sister as she has two girls!
This is SO cute. It’s my daughter’s birthday in a few weeks and she would LOVE this.
What an amazingly creative cake idea!! I feel like this would be every little girl’s ideal birthday cake! Love that it looks super fancy but is pretty easy to make too!
This is a delightful birthday cake and I love the idea of it. I bet any girl would love this for her special day and be thrilled to get such a pretty cake!
It looks Fantastic. Probably every girl dreams of this. This is every little girl’s dream! Great share with easy directions!
Could you make the cake the day before and then frost it the day if party? Would you you still freeze it or just store in the fridge overnight? Or is it best to do it all the day of?
Yes! You can store it in the freezer overnight. That way it will be really easy to frost. Just make sure it has about 30 minutes to thaw after frosting.
Fantastic! This is every little girl’s dream! My mom made me one for one of my birthdays. Actually…she made one LARGE one and like 6 small ones! Nothing like over doing it! lol …. Great, easy directions!
Am I too old to have one for my birthday, lol?? This is so precious!!
I remember these being so popular! This is such a sweet cake idea.
We are going to attempt this for my daughter’s birthday in a few weeks. Such an awesome idea, thank you so much!
My little girl loved this! The perfect birthday cake!