Ann Reardon

How to Make a Princess Cake using Buttercream

buttercream princess doll

How to make a princess cake step 1

Bake your cakes and gather what you need:

A round and a bowl shaped cake – see recipe at end of post
1 quantity of buttercream – see buttercream recipes here if you don’t like buttercream try italian meringue instead
A doll to go inside you cake
Cake board or cake stand to put the cake on
Large serated knife to cut the layers
Simple syrup – see recipe at end of post
red gel colour
large ziploc bags for piping & scissors to cut bags
White or pink sprinkles or silver cachous depending on the bodice style you choose

Vanilla Cake Recipe
(you need to double this recipe to make the princess cake. If making cupcakes this recipe makes twenty)

20 millilitres (0.68 fluid ounces) or 2 Tbsp oil
120g (4.23 ounces) or 1/2 cup plus 2 tsp margarine or butter
1 1/2 cups or 324g (11.43 ounces) sugar (caster or super fine)
2 1/4 cups or 360g (12.7 ounces) plain or all purpose flour
3 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1 1/4 cups or 312 millilitres (10.55 fluid ounces) milk (4% fat)
1 Tbsp vanilla essence
3 large eggs

Preheat oven to 180ºC (356ºF).
For best results put the butter, oil and sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer and beat for 3 minutes on high speed until pale and fluffy. Add all of the remaining ingredients at once and beat on low speed for 1 minute only so it is just combined.
Just over half fill a 20cm (7.87 inches) round cake tin and spread mixture over to the sides so dips slightly in centre.  Pour remaining mixture into an ovenproof mixing bowl, mine was 20cm (7.87 inches) diameter at the top of the bowl.   Bake in moderate oven until a skewer inserted in the centre comes out clean.  Tip: For the mixing bowl cake once it looks done – but when you insert the skewer it is still gooey – move it to the bottom shelf and place an empty baking tray on the top shelf to allow it to keep cooking without the top burning.

princess doll buttercream

Simple syrup recipe

100g (3.53 ounces) or 1/3 cup plus 2 Tbsp sugar (caster or super fine)
100 millilitres (3.38 fluid ounces) or 1/3 cup plus 1 Tbsp water
Optional – 1 Tbsp vanilla
Heat sugar and water stirring until sugar is dissolved.  Continue to heat until makes a syrup (approx 104ºC or 220ºF).
Remove from heat, allow to cool completely and put into squeezy bottle.

 

princess doll cake reardon

How to make a princess cake step 2:

Turn your cakes out of their baking dishes and allow to cool completely (warm cakes will melt the buttercream).

To shape the bowl cake place it flat side down and then slice off the bulging round bits at the top edge so that it looks more like flowing hooped skirt and not a bowl.  Hooped skirts are tailored in towards the waistline.

Cut this cake into 3 layers – that is make two cuts through the cake. Take your other cake and cut into two layers. Then take a round cookie cutter and cut a circle out of the centre of all of these cake layers.

To construct the cake, first brush each layer with syrup before you place buttercream between the layers and stack. Make a very thin ‘crumb coat’ of buttercream on the outside of the cake and place it in the fridge to harden – this will help the piped buttercream to stick to your cake. Do not worry too much if it is not perfectly smooth or beautiful looking just do your best.  Place in the fridge to firm up.

 

Cut your ziplock bag in the way shown in the video above and fill one bag with pink and the other with plain buttercream.  Using the plain buttercream pipe a ruffle around the base of the cake.  Then taking the pink buttercream and starting just above the line you just did pipe a pink ruffle around the cake.  Repeat up to the top of the cake.

Take your doll and make the hair how you want it to be – this is easier to do while you can hold the doll rather than when it is covered in icing.  If you are having the hair down then you may like to loosely put it up while you are icing.  Surround the legs of the doll in plastic wrap.

princess cake frosting

bodice 1

princess cake body

bodice 2

homemade princess doll cake recipe tutorial

bodice 3

Choose which bodice style you prefer and pipe the buttercream onto the body of the doll (see video for demonstration) allowing it to come lower than you need.  Then holding the doll by the head place it into the center of the cake – bending the legs slightly if it needs to sit lower in the cake.

Take your bag or pink buttercream and pipe one final frill around the waist to cover any gaps at the waist.

Buttercream recipes for various flavours of buttercream area available on the buttercream post.

 

2013

My Cookbook

ann reardon crazy sweet creations cookbook
Stores that sell my book listed by country: http://bit.ly/ARcookbook
All recipe quantities in the book are in grams, ounces and cups.

192 Comments View Comments

  1. Just curious as to what the sugar syrup is for, I don’t see it mentioned in the method anywhere…

  2. Hi Ann,

    First of all thank so much for this recipie. I did bake Princess cake for my friend’s daughter birthday and it was my first attempt. This cake has turn out to be very nice.

    Thanks a million for your recipies and videos.

    Best Wishes
    Garima.

    • Well done Garima, great job

  3. Thank you soooo… much! Your instructions and video are so helpful! Just did mine today. Thanks for your help!

  4. Hello Miss Ann,
    I was just looking through a bunch of recipes on the web and through youtube when your channel caught my eye. I browsed through some of your recipes and I am amazed at how easy some stuff is to make by the way you explain it. I love baking. It’s always been my passion. I totally want to try the princess Barbie cake for my little sisters birthday that’s in May. Really excited!! I am not a huge fan of buttercream at all, will try my own original cream that I use along with a chocolate cake instead of vanilla, and will see how it will turn out. Thank you so much for making your awesome recipes available for anyone to see. I really appreciate it, and will be using plenty of your recipes from now on.
    Thanks again!!!

  5. Hi, Ann I was on you tube just browsing recipes and your channel caught my attention. very informative and detailed so I decided to subscribe. On the princess cake recipe what is plain flour would that be all purpose flour. and is the vanilla essence vanilla extract never heard of it. Thank you.

    • hi Nickie, glad you found my channel. yes plain flour is all purpose flour.

  6. Hi Ann,

    I love this cake recipe, it’s become my go to,
    I just have a question, Im planning on
    Making my birthday cake today but my party’s
    Not for a week,
    Will it still be okay after that amount of time?

    • Hi kirsten, cake is always better really fresh, so it’s best to make it as close to the party as you can

  7. Hi, Ann.

    Your cakes are very very beautiful.

    How much buttercream do we need to decorate the princess cake? Do we have to put buttercream into fridge?

    thank you

    • hi emily, one quantity of the recipe above should be enough. Yes in the fridge.

  8. Hi Ann

    Do you have a chocolate sponge recipe that can be used for this cake??

  9. Hi thanks for this site. I followed every step and the princess cake i made turned out perfect . This was my first time at making my daughters birthday cake, and i was very satisfied with the outcome, also seeing my daughter happy with her cake. thanks again this was my result.

    • well done Marilyn, im sure she loved it

  10. Thanks alot for this site i followed every step and the cake i made turned out perfect . My Daughter was very happy , and i was very satisfied with the result ,its was my first time at making my daughters birthday cake . i will try and do something every year now thanks to you instead of ordering .A big thanks again

  11. Hi Ann. .how are..I keep trying your recipes…
    Ann just wanted to know the frosting you used for doll cake is basic buttercream??
    as I have to make the doll cake for my friends daughter..
    If any more ideas you can give me for that will be really helpful.
    Thank you

    • hi sehej, yes american buttercream.

  12. Thanks so much got the icing tips, I followed your icing method and the cake came out lovely 🙂 Chami from Sri Lanka

  13. Thanks for all the great info on how to make this cake. Will find out how it tastes tonight

  14. Hello Ann,

    This was my 1st attempt at doing a princess cake.

    My granddaughter & I watch your youtube videos weekly. She and I made this in honor of her 5th birthday. The cake is yummy!

    Many thanks,
    Lynn

  15. Hello Ann,

    Thank you for sharing all the knowledge about making such beautiful cakes!!! Just wanted to check with you if it’s ok to replace the cake recipe with my own. I usually use fruit it my cakes which makes them so delish and moist. Like adding mashed banana to chock cake batter. Or if I make cake without fruit can I then layer it with whipped cream and chopped strawberries, or just whipped cream??? I see your sponge in the video s quite compact, not much air, so I shouldn’t use more fluffy and light cake batter??? Thanks so much!!!

  16. Hi Ann,

    I was reading your recipe and was just wandering when you mean double does that mean to double everything or only some of the ingredients? It just seemed like a lot of each so I just got paranoid if something wrong could go wrong if I doubled it all as it seems really increased. I’m a first time baker i’m about to attempt the princess cake so I thought I’d get a clarification. Thanks and I love your channel!

    • Hi Fady, yes you need to double everything in the recipe 😀

  17. Hi Ann can use your sponge cake recipe to make barbie cake,pls advice. Thank you.

    • Hi nelly yes you can but I think you’d need to double the recipe

  18. Hi Anne,
    I’m from Ireland and I watch your YouTube channel the day your new videos come out every week. I’m 13 and I recently made my sister this cake for her 8th birthday. It’s such a great cake for all ages and my granny seemed to be getting more excited when it came out then my sister was! They all loved it, thank you so much for all the great recipes and videos, I hope I grow up to be like you one day!!

    • Hi Nessa, that was so lovely of you to make your big sister a cake, you did well. Thanks for watching the videos each week 😀

  19. Have just completed this, was so excited to try it, I’m a complete novice but your video made it look so easy I decided to give it a go. Thank you so much, this is only the beginning of a new passion for me, I’m still buzzing, probably from all the sugar!! It’ll be home-made cakes all the way now

    • beautiful Maria, fantastic job

  20. Hi Ann,

    Made this cake yesterday for my 3 year old daughter and she loved it.
    This is the first time I made such a cake!
    Thank you tons for your recipes and videos

    Cheers
    Aaisha

    • lovely job aaisha happy birthday to your daughter

Leave a Reply to Bee Cancel Reply

Your email address will not be published.

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

*

ADD JPEG TO YOUR COMMENT