Practice piping on wax paper until you get comfortable creating your designs. Hereis a great post on some simple piping techniques to try.

The cake itself, has 5 thin layers of vanilla cake, 3 – 8″ layers, and 1 – 6″ cake sliced in half. For these, I used my favorite Golden Vanilla cake mix from King Arthur Flour. In the fold of her skirt, I added dark purple swirls (again with the Princess Shimmers) and in the middle of each flower placed an edible pearl. I also used the silver shimmer again to fill in some more texture to mimic the glitter on her actual skirt. I also added some definition to the fold in her skirt with the purple and outlined the bottom of the dress.I used this cake pan 2 times already. Both were with Barbie dolls. The cake was chocolate. I never use box mixes since I do not like the taste. I found that I had to bake my usual recipe15 min longer than usual. I used Magnolia Bakery’s Chocolate Birthday Cake recipe. (it is enough for a 9″ three layer cake and fills the wonder mold pan perfectly.) Since it is such a moist cake it didn”t dry out as much when I baked it longer.

Also if you are planning streamers, table setup, etc, for an outdoor party…rethink that! Even a little wind ruins a nice table setting…I had an elaborate table design for each table planned and the wind just made it completely impossible! So…be aware of that!I love using our homemade buttercream frosting or fondant 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 Disney princess 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. How to Decorate a Princess Cake Instead of angleing the legs I make one additional 9″ round cake layer and put it below the wilton mold cake. This usually means doubling the recipe. 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. After the cake is good and chilled, start covering the whole mountain with frosting. I chose to do the paper drag again to give me a smooth surface. For any of the Barbie cakes what we need to start with is start at the inside/bottom and work your way out/up! So the underskirt is where we’re starting.

I let the cake sit over night to let the frosting harden so the long hair from the doll wouldn’t get glued in. In the morning I let Rapunzel’s hair down, added the extension and draped it around the cake. In your big bowl, cream together the butter, sugar and dry strawberry gelatin until light and fluffy chunks. I’ve seen some amazing characters created for cakes – most made out of fondant. They are truly works of art! But few can sculpt these beauties for their own cakes made at home. So for this cake, I used a toddler doll version of Rapunzel, which I bought at my local Walmart. It even came with her adorable little chameleon friend Pascal!! This helped create an amazing cake for a 3 year old, and she can have the doll and toy to play with later! I made 2 batches of my cream cheese buttercream in a beautiful shade of light purple to frost the whole cake. Then another batch a bright yellow for the braid. I flavored each batch with lemon extract. See prior post.

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. Prep your piping bags with the colors and tips you are going to use. I have found that big tips are my friend when it comes for frosting a princess Barbie cake. You can get pretty designs without having to pipe lots of individual stars. The Elsa cake (below) was less time consuming than the Rapunzel cake (also below).