Making a Princess Cake

I am NOT a creative cake maker. I always use the good old 9x13 for birthdays, and two stacked round cakes when I am really feeling birthday creative, and most often lately it has been cupcakes for birthdays!

For some reason this year, I decided to stretch the cake abilities and try a princess cake for a 2 year old birthday. Maybe it is because I have older kids now, and they can appreciate the efforts, and they did. So here is the process for making a really easy "hard looking" cake.

STEP 1

So step one, the longest part. You need to bake 2 cakes using a pampered chef glass 8 cup measurer, the batter bowl they may call it? The cakes are so thick they have to bake for 1 hour and 15 minutes each. It is hard for me to be patient for the fun decorating part, so this seemed to take all day. You could fit two batter bowls in the oven, but who has two? I guess I should have borrowed one from a friend and cut my time in half. Here is the recipe/directions I followed over at Pampered Chef.

STEP 2

Here is cake number one, with its bottom edge cut off to make it nice and flat. I didn't get a picture of the two stacked without frosting. You only use the bottom 2/3 of the second cake, and let the kids snack on the leftovers. The bananas and wheat bread have nothing to do with the cake, I just bake amidst kitchen mess! So step two, frost and stack the two cakes.

STEP 3

Frost the outside with a base layer of frosting. My cakes didn't match up perfectly, but nothing a bit of frosting won't fix. The two cake part is important or the cake won't be tall enough for the dolls legs to stick into.

STEP 4

Time to stick in your Barbie/Princess/Fairy --whichever doll you choose. This is Sleeping Beauty, with her bottom half wrapped in plastic wrap. It really made clean up nice of the doll when the birthday girl wanted her after the cake was eaten.

STEP 5

Time to get some clothes on this girl. Stick her right into the cake. Start covering her with frosting in any way you like.

STEP 6

Dress design. I just used a star tip with the frosting and covered her with stars. This is a great way for beginners, the class of decorators that I am in. The stars are very forgiving and don't have to be perfect. Make sure you tie up her hair somehow, or it gets stuck in the soft frosting.

STEP 7

Add some frills, fix up her hair and put in the freezer if you have room. I was making this cake a day before, so I put it in the freezer. This really cemented up the frosting nicely.

I could hardly cut into her, but everyone loved eating the princess! And it feeds a lot!