Barbie Doll Cake...

Its already March.. this year is flying by!
March this year brings a lot of cake making for me.. my nieces birthday, cousins wedding, mothers day and my dads birthday! It looks like Im going to be a very busy bee!!!
My niece was 2 at the beginning of the month so I decided to make her a birthday cake fit for a princess... a Barbie Doll cake. These cakes are a great idea for any little girl who loves Barbies or dolls.

I got the idea off the Internet and as always, I tutored myself on how to do the cake. I watched a few videos on YouTube and remembered the important bits so I would know what to do when it was time to make the cake.

I made a basic vanilla sponge cake mix and baked it in a Pampered Chef glass jug like the one in the picture below (but without the lid!) . Once the cake was baked and cooled I turned the cake upside down which gave a dome shape, this was the barbies dress. I cut the dome shaped cake through the middle and spread buttercream onto one side and jam on the other then sandwiched them back together (like a victoria sponge cake)
I then made a circular hole in the top of the cake to insert a real Barbie Doll. The doll I got was on a skewer from the waist down so was easy to insert however a full barbie doll can be used and if the legs are wrapped tightly in clingfilm, the recipient of the cake can keep the doll afterwards which is great for small girls. I then coated the whole outside of the cake with buttercream to help seal the fondant icing when it was put on.

Before inserting the barbie doll, I covered the cake with the first layer of fondant icing. I went for a real girly Barbie look so went for all pink decorations. I used two shades of pink icing, a vibrant fushia pink and a baby pink shade. I used the fushia pink as the first layer of the dress and the baby pink for the overlay.

I rolled out the fushia pink icing so it was large enough to cover the circumference of the cake and placed it loosely over the cake, gently pinching it in certain places to give it the look of a ruffled flowing dress. I thought this would be more difficult than it was... it seemed to just curl and fold at the right places. With a little tweeking and trimming I was happy with the first layer of icing.

I then inserted the Barbie skewer and added the second layer of icing which gave the effect of a second layer to the dress. I cut the icing in a pattern so that it had circular edges, like a layer of lace ruffled on a wedding dress and pasted it on top of the first layer of icing. I then added some fondant flowers to the dress as decorations and piped buttercream around the bottom edge of the dress to give it a neat finish. I iced the Barbie Dolls body and created sleeves on the doll made out of buttercream. I also tied a pink bow around her waist and tied it round the back so the bow draped down the back of her dress; a nice final touch.

I was very happy with the end result and would recommend making this cake for any little girl's birthday!! There are lots of variations to this recipe so if a girl has a favourite disney princess, the decorations could be altered to make it look like that princess. I love the one below of the Little Mermaid and might try to make this in the near future as I think it looks amazing.