Rainbow Barbie Cake

My sister loves dolls and barbies and all those types of things! It was her birthday a few days ago, and she asked for a barbie birthday cake. I had made her one for her previous birthday, and she had really liked it, so we decided to do another. I don't know what she was imagining, but I think I surpassed her expectations! She was surprised and delighted at this gorgeous cake! I hope you will like it just as much as she did!

Ingredients for Cake:

• 2 Gluten Free Vanilla Cake Mixes
• All the ingredients it lists on the back that you need... it might vary depending on what cake mix you are using, so I'm not going to list them here
• 1 tablespoon vanilla- for extra flavor!
• Food Dye

Ingredients for Decorations:

• 1 ounce fresh/frozen blueberries
• 2 or 3 frozen strawberries
• Buttercream frosting
• Fondant- but fondant intractable needs to be made first!!!
• Food Dye
• Gobstopper Heartbreakers

Utensils:

• Kitchenaid mixer
• Hand mixer
• Ziplock Sandwich bags
• Knife (to shave off extra cake)
• Rotating cake decorating stand
• 1-quart oven safe bowl
• Saran wrap
• Eight-inch cake pan

And, last but not least, a BARBIE DOLL!

Gather ingredients listed on the back of your cake mix (such as butter/oil, eggs, water, etc.) and mix until well incorporated- about a minute. Then add a tablespoon of vanilla. Separate cake mix into three sections- one for each of the pans, but make sure to make the "top of the dress" section a bit larger than the others.

Take each bowl of batter and dye to the colors you want. I did blue (but it turned out more of an aqua) for the bottom layer, purple for the middle and a peachy pink for the top. Once dyed, transfer batter into cake pans. Now I'm sure you're wondering "Why can't I just dye batter in the pan? It would save more dishes! LOL!" I did do that for pan, but I was really afraid that the cake would end up sticking to the bottom and it kind of did. I don't think I recommend it.

Bake the cakes at whatever temperature and time prescribed, then take out and allow to cool for at least ten minutes before removing from cake pan. If the cakes don't exactly seem to be coming out very easily, use a knife to ease them out a little, or just let them cool for a little longer.

Once out of cake pans, put on cooling racks and stick in the freezer. Don't stack them! Even though it seems like a great idea to save space and to see how it'll look when done, don't do it! My experience is that when I do that, the cakes get stuck together and it's really hard to pull them apart without breaking them.

You're going to leave the cakes in the freezer until they are pretty hard- somewhere around 4-6 hours. If you don't have time to work on them today, feel free to leave them in the freezer for a bit longer. I was busy the day before my sister's birthday, so I just left them in the freezer. Feel free to leave them for however long you need, just make sure they are hard when you take them out!

After cakes are frozen, take them out of the freezer and set on a cutting board. Take the "top of the dress" cake and shave off any extra cake to make it flat. The other two cakes don't really matter at all, since they both will have a filling in them to make up for any uneven surfaces.

Now take your "top of the dress" cake and set on top of the other two, making sure it's perfectly centered. Now it's time for the fun stuff! Take your knife and begin to cut the cake to take off all the extra stuff. There's going to be a lot! Once the cake is the right shape, take all the scrap pieces and set aside. You'll need them later.

Take some of your buttercream frosting and layer on a thin layer on top of the bottom (aqua) cake. Take a handful of blueberries and press them into the frosting. It's okay if some of them get kind of smashed. It'll happen from the weight of the cake on top of them! Lightly frost the bottom of the middle (purple) cake and set on top of the bottom cake. Frost the top of the middle cake, and then slice two or three strawberries and set them on the top of the cake. I found that using frozen strawberries worked the best since I was able to easily cut them really thin. Frost the bottom of the top cake and set on top of the strawberry layer. It's not going to cover it all, and that's just fine!

Since the blueberries make the middle cake stand up a bit higher then if it had only been the buttercream, there's going to be a lot of space between the two cakes. This is where the scraps come in handy. Take your scraps and begin filling in the gaps between the two cakes. It's not going to look perfect and some pieces are going to stick out a little far- but feel free to break them off if you need to. The frosting will cover up any impurities, so it doesn't have to be perfect.

Stick in the freezer for about an hour, or until it is hardened again.

Take a bit of your white frosting and crumb coat the cake. It doesn't need to look perfect because the rainbow decorations will cover it. All the crumb coat's job is to keep the crumbs from getting in the frosting decorations.

With crumb coat done, take your knife and cut through the center of the cake, to make a hole large enough for the Barbie's legs to fit through. I'm not going to insert the doll yet since I want to make the skirt first, but feel free to test the whole with the barbie, because you don't want it to be too small and have to cut out more at the end because that might ruin the decorations.

With crumb coat done, we're going to begin the white "petticoat". From the picture above, you can kind of get the idea of what I was doing with the front part.

Take a knife and cut very, very gentle down the front to give you a bit of a pattern to see what you need to fill in. From the second picture, you can kind of see what I did. Once you have to pattern on the crumb coat, take some of your white frosting in a ziplock bag and go over the outline. Shake your hand just very gently to give it those squiggly lines that we are looking for. Once the outline is done, fill it in with the white frosting with the same squiggly lines that you did for the outline. By the end, it should look like the last image.

Now let's begin the rainbow dress! I started with a light green, and went up from there to a darker green, to an aqua, to a blue, to a purple, to a lavender, to a pink, to an orange, to a dark yellow, to a light yellow until you are finished covering the cake. Use your squiggly frosting lines all the way around, going straight around instead of the up and down like the petticoat.

Take about half a cup of white fondant (you can check out my marshmallow fondant recipe here!) and divide it into six different sections. Each section will be a different color- like the skirt- green, blue, pink, orange, yellow, purple. Take each of these strips and roll them out into long, thin strips. Roll all six of them into a ball, and then roll them out with a rolling pin. Once it is rolled out, cut off the edges to make it more of a straight line. Take that strip of fondant and wrap it around the doll's top to make a bodice. If you don't want to work anymore on the bodice, you can leave it strapless, but I chose to go with straps.

For the staps, take two little pieces of fondant and slightly wet each end, then attach the wet parts to the bodice on the front and back. This is very simple, so I won't spend very much time on it. If the straps are loose, cut the fondant a little to make them fit more securely.

We are going to now add the bow for on the front of the dress. Take a chunk of fondant, about the same amount that would fit inside two tablespoons- it's an odd way to say it, but I think you get the idea, just the same! Roll the fondant into a "snake" and fold it over so that it somewhat resembles a bow, like the picture above. Now take a bit more fondant (of a different color) and roll it the same way, then circle it around the middle of the bow. If there is any extra fondant, cut it off. Only go around the bow once.

With the top part of the bow finished, we are going to take one of the gobstopper heartbreakers and place it right in the middle. You might need to wet it slightly on the back to make sure it sticks to the bow.

Now for the ribbons. Take a little bit of fondant and roll them, then pat them flat so that they aren't 3D- but you don't want them paper thin. Just a little bit. Now, attach these by the bow, and then twist them around. Wet the bottom and stick them to your fondant, so that the twists don't unravel. This will look really cool in the end!

Insert your barbie. As you can see from the first picture, the bodice doesn't exactly connect with the skirt, so take some fondant and cover the hole (like the second picture). Since there was a bit too much space still left open in the front, I smoothed it over with a bit of frosting. Do whatever suits you!

Cut the cake like a normal cake, just make sure you don't cut the doll! If you prefer to be "safe" about it, take the doll out before you cut.

Another thing, I would not recommend using candles on this cake. I never have and I don't know where you would put them- hopefully not close to the doll!

Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed my instructable!