How To Make A Princess Birthday Cake

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

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: