Prepare cake batter. You will need enough batter for a 3-layer cake.

Use a pastry brush and coat your 9-inch bundt pan with melted butter or shortening. Fill the pan ⅔ of the way full with cake batter.

Grease and line the bottom of two 6-inch round cake pans with parchment paper.Fill each 6-inch pan ⅔ of the way full with cake batter. If you are using a glass mixing bowl to bake in, be sure to grease it well first.

Bake at 350ºF until the cakes are golden at the edges and a toothpick comes out clean when inserted into the center of each cake. The 6-inch cakes will be finish baking first after approximately 25-30 minutes. The bundt will take about 10 minutes more.

Let cake rounds cool 10-15 minutes in the pans before inverting and cooling on a wire rack. Let the bundt cake cool in the pan for 10 minutes. Then place a wire cooling rack over the base of the cake and invert the pan to release.

Let the cakes completely cool before frosting. I like to bake the cakes a day before serving and assemble/frost the next day. Using a biscuit cutter or measuring cup and knife, remove the center of the 6-inch cakes.

When the cakes are cooled and ready, it’s time to prepare the crumb coat frosting. Again, I made strawberry frosting for the initial stacking and crumb coat. You can also use buttercream. You will need about 4 cups of frosting for this step.

Level off the bottom of bundt cake (the domed top while it was baking) and place it on your cake stand or cardboard cake round. If any chunks get broken off, use the frosting to glue it back on.

Frost the top of the cake and inner hole, then place one of the 6-inch cakes with the flat bottom was facing up. Scrape off the excess frosting.

Frost the inner hole and top of the 6-inch cake and place the second cake round on top. This time I kept the dome top facing up.

Use a serrated knife to shave off sides of the cake until the cake resembles a bell or dress. It doesn’t have to be perfect as the flaws will be hidden with frosting.

Once you are happy with the shape of your cake, add a thin layer of frosting around the entire cake. Chill the cake for at least an hour before piping rosettes over it.

Prepare the buttercream frosting by whipping the butter in a stand mixer til fluffy.

Add powdered sugar, heavy cream and vanilla and whip for 2 minutes until frosting is whipped and light in color.

Reserve about 2-cups in a bowl and leave it white. Divide the remaining frosting into two bowls. For the ombre affect, I colored one bowl of buttercream with the dark pink and the other with super light. Transfer the dark pink into a piping bag with the #1M piping tip.

Wrap Barbie’s legs in plastic wrap to keep her clean. Make sure Barbie is washed and clean. Style her hair BEFORE inserting her into the cake. Also you will need to clip her hair while you work so some touching up will be needed.

Pipe a row of dark pink rosettes along the bottom of the cake. Try to keep the rosettes tight, but know we can fill in any gaps that you may have later. You can make them as small or as large you like, just try to make them uniform looking.

Squeeze out the remaining dark pink frosting back into the bowl and add some of the light pink and mix. Place this lighter pink back into the piping bag and pipe the lighter pink rosettes above the dark row.

Continue adding light pink and white frosting to whatever frosting you have leftover to lighten up the next layer of rosettes until you make it to the top of the cake. It can get messy so you can always use a new piping bag if you need to.

Slide Barbie into the center of the cake. Have her lean forward if you can. Pipe the final layer of rosettes on the top of the cake, just touching Barbie and the center hole.

You don’t want Barbie’s hair to get in the way so use her arms or a clip to get it out of the way. If you don’t have to pipe a corset on her body, then finish filling in the area near her waist by make stars with your 1M tip or a smaller star tip.

(star tip) to fill up the gaps around her waist and the corset. I mixed whatever light pink I had leftover with the white to do this. I also added stars and pink sugar pearls to fill up the gaps in the rosettes.

Refrigerate until ready to serve.