First off, I would like to mention what a pain-in-the-behind this cake was. I thought I was BRILLIANT and could do this in one afternoon with a bundt-cake pan and a cheap doll. Boy was I ever wrong! I started out with two boxes of cake mix, two cans of frosting, cooking spray, flour, food coloring and white chocolate chips for decorating.
It quickly turned into 4 boxes of mix and 3 cans of frosting. This is NOT a small cake. I used a fancy pan that is called a "tube pan." This type of pan is normally used for Angel-food cake, but it worked great for this!
I first greased the pan with cooking spray and then used foil to cover the opening in the bottom of the pan (I was out of parchment paper, but that would probably work much better.)
Then I sprayed the rest of the pan and floured it well. The cake REALLY wanted to stick to this pan! I had to use three of these to get the correct height for the doll. You could do the same thing with 6 9-inch round pans but the hole from the tube works so well!
For between the layers I used fresh sliced strawberries and a filling of cream cheese frosting mixed with strawberry puree. I would only use half a basket of berries to a can of frosting. I made WAY too much and had a huge bowl left and nothing to use it for.
Once I sliced the strawberries I arranged them in a single layer on top of the cooled, leveled first layer.
Then I poured on a bit of the filling. It is quite sloppy so avoid going too close to the edge!
As I got closer to the top, I left more of an edge so that I would be able to trim the cake to the correct shape.
I also took a cardboard paper-towel tube and cut it to the correct height of the doll's skirt. I wanted to be able to use the top of the dress without getting frosting everywhere. I would have used frosting on a naked doll, but I am awful at piping something as detailed as a dress bodice on a tiny doll.
I also used plastic wrap to keep the doll's hair out of the way while I was working with it.
I got tired at this point and stopped taking quite so many photos. Sorry. Basically I just trimmed the cakes until they were roughly the correct shape and then piped on the tinted frosting. I used the white chocolate chips as details.
If you look in the center of the cake you can see the cardboard tube where the fully dressed doll can sit without getting gross.
Here are the white chocolate chip "flowers" around the sides and back of the skirt.
This shows the finished skirt with the doll installed; the hair is still wrapped because the frosting hasn't set yet. A few hours in the fridge puts a nice shell on the frosting so it doesn't get into the hair.
The completely finished product! Hope I helped someone out. All I know is it was a hit with my 5-year old, which made the whole thing worth it!
Thanks for reading!
