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I made several of these in my pre-celiac days. The main thing is to  use a cake that will bake up well in a "bundt" pan. If it bakes well  as a Bundt cake, the Barbie pan will work just fine. I've hade great  success baking Sylvan Border Farms Lemon Cake Mix in a bundt, so that  should work.  As far as frosting, many from-scratch frostings are already GF -  check Joy of Cooking, Betty Crocker, etc. Your basic confectioner's sugar icing should do it...



Hi.  I made this cake for my daughter's 3rd birthday (she's now 6 and she  was  diagnosed at 19 months).  I know I just used a GF cake mix that was made for a 9 x 13 size pan.  It was much easier than I thought it was going to  be.  I  am self taught with these character cake pans and it has not been hard at all.  I think I improvised a bit on the exact design on Barbie's dress, but  it turned out great.  I used the Wilton frosting in a can and used Wilton colors to make the frosting what colors I wanted.  You just pipe the designs on the cake and then stick the doll in and then make her a "top" with more frosting in the pipe bags.  The only suggestion I have is make sure the frosting isn't quite room temp.  Obviously, it has to be warm enough to work with, but the cooler it was, the better it stuck on the vertical design of the "dress".  The same goes for the frosting you pipe on Barbie's body.  I do remember the day of the party it was a bit humid outside and the frosting started
 to slide off of Barbie's plastic body.  Nothing horrible, but I had to keep her refrigerated until cake time once I noticed it starting to slide.  All it took was the refrigeration to solve the problem, though.  I also think I had to cook the actual cake a bit longer than the package directions.  I was paranoid it wasn't going to cook all the way through. But, the good old toothpick or butter knife in the "dress" worked just fine.  The center metal piece is to help the cake cook  evenly.  I believe I used a  Miss Roben's cake mix because we think they are pretty yummy.  Let the cake cool completely before you attempt to frost and brush off any crumbs or else  they will blend into your frosting designs.  Have fun with it...it's a good cake to be able to let your imagination take over and design a pretty  "dress".

Good Luck!  Kris  in IL



I, too, have wondered how to make such a cake.  When I was little, my mom made one out of frozen ice cream.  Unfortunately, she (Barbie) sat on the counter too long and met a melty demise face first into a puddle of goo to which my sister burst into tears.  We haven’t tried again since.





Okay, the last major cake I made was Thomas the Tank Engine, not Barbie, but I've got a few suggestions.
1. Dowd and Rogers GF mixes produce a cake with a good surface to work on. Before you begin to frost, brush the cake with pastry brush to remove any loose crumbs - they look uggy in the finished frosting. The side of the cake that on top when it baked also usually is better to frost - fewer loose crumbs than the bottom side.
Duncan Hines frostings I'd call acceptable, but not great. I used them for coating the cake, and did my decorating with a simple powdered sugar/butter/vanilla/milk frosting - I made a big batch, separated it into smaller bowls, and added food coloring. My recipe was pretty much the one off of the C&H Sugar box. I did use Cake Mate in the canister for the black color (too hard to make black) - if you are doing precise decorating, it isn't a good choice as the pressure in the canister can be uneven and you get both think globs and too thin areas.  What sort of decorating tube do you have? I think the doll cake
instructions usually call for 2 different star tips? Also, when doing fancy cakes, I buy a bunch of the disposable plastic pastry bags to use for different colors of frosting. And make more colored frosting than you think you'll need: if you have to make a second batch to finish the cake, it will never come out the same color as the first - trust me on this one. ;-) The frosting will usually hold its shape better if you make it a little thick - harder to squeeze out, but quicker drying.

What a fun project! I'd like to try one someday, but I suspect my son wouldn't appreciate it. :-)  made one for my daughter.  I used a large round cake pan with a small one on top and cut out a place for Barbie, but I know Pampered Chef has an almost dome-shaped measuring bowl that works for this too if you don't want to buy a special pan.  I squeezed a lot of frosting around Barbie for her dress.  I made a cream cheese frosting with some gluten-free flour mix (low in rice flour) for the frosting.  I sprinkled a lot of a gluten-free glitter I got from a cake shop, so the Barbie really looked pretty.  You can get the glitters in purple, gold, silver, iridescent, pink, etc.  They are kind of like small glitter flakes almost that you sprinkle on the frosting the day of the party.  They make anything look really nice!  The cake shop had a horse and carriage that I put on the larger part of the cake that looked really nice also.  It was a fun cake to make and my daughter loved it!



~Melonie (R.O.C.K. leader for NoVa/Metro DC Chapter)  & Owner of SillyYaks (www.groups.yahoo.com/group/SillyYaks)
"Do not follow where the path may lead.  Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail." quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson






















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