If you’re looking for Disney Princess Cake Ideas, look no further! Inspired by Aurora’s 16th Birthday Cake, this vegan version of a Sleeping Beauty Cake made by Fauna tastes like the best tender and moist vanilla cake you’ve ever had, and is so much fun to make!

The best Disney Princess Cake Recipe!

For my birthday this year (September 12th!), I decided that I wanted to do something a bit more special.

It’s not like this year is any fantastic number (I’m turning 26- gasp!!), but because we all seem to grow up so fast, I decide to make a cake as a reminder that though we age, we should always keep our sense of wonder and imagination.

And so, I’m paying homage to one of my favorite Disney movies as a kid, Sleeping Beauty.

sleeping beauty birthday cake

This vegan Sleeping Beauty cake is inspired by the one Fauna tries to make Aurora for her 16th birthday. Of course, Fauna forgot to even bake the cake- but we’re not letting that happen this time!

With tiers of vegan vanilla cake all encased in a secretly dairy free buttercream frosting, this is the Disney birthday cake recipe to make, vegan or not!

The cake is so incredibly tender and moist, full of vanilla flavor, and tastes just like a classic vanilla cake- in fact, it’s based off of my favorite vegan vanilla cake recipe!

This vegan birthday cake is for the dreamer and little kid in all of us 🙂 Of course, you can also make it for your kids as well! 🙂

slice of vegan disney birthday cake on cake plate

How to make a Sleeping Beauty cake

I made a whole video tutorial on how to make this cake from start to finish, so be sure to check that out!

Essentially, I took my favorite cake recipe (aka my vegan vanilla cake), and multiplied it to create a four tier cake rather than a one tier.

However, I didn’t want to use 20 cups of flour, so I actually baked the cakes in a way so that I only had to bake four cake layers but they baked in a way that I could slice them in half.

slice of vegan sleeping beauty birthday cake with candle

The recipe card has the full details for how much of each ingredient you need!

A few tips on making the cake batter:

  • It’s a lot of cake batter so you’ll want to be sure that the flour is fully incorporated into the wet ingredients. This could take a few minutes (and a strong arm).
  • To save time and energy: if you have a stand mixer, you can use the cake paddle to mix the batter.
  • Read through the entire directions and ingredients: this is always smart to do for any recipe, but especially one that has many steps! While this Sleeping Beauty cake isn’t difficult, it’s not your average Disney birthday cake! It has steps that need to be followed in order so that your secretly vegan birthday cake comes out perfectly!
  • There are swaps for gluten free: if you need gluten-free, I recommend using a gluten free 1:1 baking flour and mixing in some arrowroot powder or cornstarch (exact measurements are in the recipe card). This will give the flour more of that tender and moist texture, like regular cake flour does.
  • Use either coconut oil or vegan butter in the cake batter: if you want a cake that tastes exactly like a traditional vanilla cake (yet is secretly vegan!), use vegan butter. I recommend Miyoko’s or Forager Project. However, coconut oil is also a great option and works very well.
  • Use cake pan sleeves: because we’re slicing each layer in half, you’ll want to minimize the peaking of the cake layers. To do this, I recommend using a cake sleeve, which helps create that perfectly baked cake.
girl lighting vegan birthday cake

Assemble a four tier cake

I know this seems like a tricky part, but it’s actually really quite easy to assemble a multi-tier (in this case, four tier!) cake!

To see a more visual version, please check out my YouTube video on how to assemble the cake!

What you’ll need:

  • 8″ and 6″ cake boards
  • cake dowels
  • cake stand or plate

That’s really it! Now, if you’re doing four tiers, like the Sleeping Beauty cake pictured, you’ll need to dowel three of the four tiers (because the top tier won’t need dowels!).

placing candles into vegan birthday cake

To dowel a cake tier, simply take one tier and place the full dowel into the cake. See where the frosting on top meets the cake dowel, and score it (carefully, either with a knife or scissors).

Then remove the dowel and cut that piece off. Use that piece to measure another dowel (in this case, you have two 8″ tiers, so you’ll need a total of four cake dowels all the same size, so make four!).

Place two dowels towards the middle in the cake tier, and you’ve doweled one layer! Now just repeat for the remaining two layers (you’ll have one 8″ tier left and one 6″ tier).

dowels in cake

Now to stack the cake tiers, simply place the bottom 8″ tier on the cake stand, and carefully place the second 8″ tier on top, slightly off center for that crooked cake look.

stacked cake tiers

Place the dowel-ed 6″ tier on top, slightly back towards the center, and the final tier on top!

Now all we need to do is decorate!

How to decorate a Disney Birthday Cake

I wanted to keep very close to the movie, where Fauna haphazardly smears blue icing all over her unbaked cake (did anyone else catch that line?!).

However, I wanted to also make this a really straight forward Disney birthday cake recipe, so I just simply added vegan blue food coloring to the remaining vegan buttercream frosting, and piped the drips on!

iced vegan sleeping beauty cake

Of course, you have to keep with the pink candles, like in Sleeping Beauty the movie. These are the specific pink candles that I used!

However, you can also decorate the cake with pink icing instead of blue (much like how the fairies fight over the color of Aurora’s dress!). Or even do your favorite color (or the favorite color of whomever’s birthday it is!).

sleeping beauty cake with pink candles

I hope you love this Sleeping Beauty Cake as much as I do! Leave it to me to make a Disney birthday cake on my 26th birthday ha! But truly, I think the most important part of life is to never lose your sense of wonder and imagination- that’s what keeps us going and growing!

If you make this vegan birthday cake, let me know how it went for you down below in the comments section, as well as giving it a rating so that everyone can see how it went!

As always, I absolutely love to see your creations on Instagram and Pinterest, so be sure to tag me there!

Happy cake baking (I know you’ll do better than Fauna haha!)!

girl blowing out candles of sleeping beauty cake

More vegan birthday cake recipes:

Vegan Pumpkin Patch Cake

The BEST Vegan Vanilla Cake

Naturally Colored Funfetti Cake

The Ultimate Vegan Chocolate Cake

Vegan Black Forest Cake

Paleo Vegan Chocolate Cake

Vegan Blueberry Lemon Cake

Gluten Free Vegan Peppermint Cake

The BEST Vegan Red Velvet Cake

Want to save this recipe for later? Add it to your favorite recipe board on Pinterest!

how to make a sleeping beauty birthday cake
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sleeping beauty cake

Vegan Sleeping Beauty Cake

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  • Author: thebananadiaries
  • Prep Time: 70
  • Cook Time: 33
  • Total Time: 1 hour 43 minutes
  • Yield: 40 1x
  • Category: Dessert
  • Method: Baking
  • Cuisine: American
  • Diet: Vegan
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Description

If you’re looking for Disney Princess Cake Ideas, look no further! Inspired by Aurora’s 16th Birthday Cake, this vegan version of a Sleeping Beauty Cake made by Fauna tastes like the best tender and moist vanilla cake you’ve ever had, and is so much fun to make!

Ingredients

Scale

Cake Layers:

  • 6 cups organic flour or gluten free 1-to-1 baking flour, sifted (do NOT skip- add in 1 tsp arrowroot powder if using gluten free 1-to-1 baking flour, see Note) 
  • 2 1/8 cup cane sugar or coconut sugar (see Note) 
  • 3 1/2 tsp baking powder 
  • 1 3/4 tsp baking soda 
  • 1/2 tsp finely ground sea salt 
  • 2 1/2 cup unsweetened dairy free milk, room temperature 
  • 3 1/2 tsp apple cider vinegar (to be mixed with coconut/almond milk) 
  • 1 1/4 cup unsweetened applesauce, room temperature 
  • 1/2 cup coconut oil or vegan butter, melted 
  • 3 1/2 tbsp vanilla extract

Vegan Buttercream Frosting:

  • 4 cups vegan butter*
  • 7 cups powdered sugar
  • 1 tbsp vanilla extract
  • 2–3 tbsp dairy-free milk
  • 2 tsp vegan blue food coloring

Instructions

See Notes section for equipment!

Cake Layers:

  1. Preheat the oven to 350F and grease two 8″ cake pans and 6″ cake pans with olive or coconut oil. Line them with parchment paper rounds and lightly flour the sides.
  2. Add apple cider vinegar to unsweetened coconut/almond milk and set aside.
  3. In a large bowl, whisk together flour, sugar baking powder, baking soda and sea salt. Set aside.
  4. In a medium bowl, add dairy free milk and apple cider vinegar mixture, coconut oil, applesauce, and vanilla together. Mix until thoroughly combined.
  5. Pour wet ingredients into dry and stir until there are no more clumps of batter. This will take a bit of effort, as there is a lot of batter. I recommend using a cake stand if you can. Just make sure that you don’t miss any flour at the bottom of the bowl. If your cake batter looks a little dry, you can add in by the tablespoon a little more coconut or almond milk.
  6. Divid the batter evenly into the cake pans. The cake pans should each have about 2″ in height worth of cake batter. 
  7. Place cake pans into the oven and bake, about 25-27 for the 6″ cake pans and 30-32 minutes for the 8″ cake pans, or until the toothpick comes out clean. The tops fo the cakes should be lightly golden.
  8. Let the cakes cool in the pan for 10 minutes, then transfer them to a cooling rack to cool for another 10 minutes. Slice each cake in half using a large seated knife and keep them on the cooling rack to completely before preparing the frosting.

Vegan Buttercream:

  1. In a large bowl, beat the vegan butter until fluffy and creamy.
  2. While you continue to beat, start to sift in the powdered sugar, carefully integrating the powdered sugar into the vegan butter. 
  3. Once all of the powdered sugar is incorporated, add in 2 tbsp of dairy free milk and the vanilla extract. The buttercream should be thick but moveable and smooth. If you need an additional tbsp of dairy free milk, add it in here.
  4. Set the buttercream aside (we’ll add in the blue at the end of the assembly) and prepare the cakes (see Assembly section).

Assembly:

  1. Once the buttercream is made and the cakes are fully cool, place 1/2 of each cake on their respective cake boards (there will be two 8″ cake layers on two different 8″ cake boards and two 6″ cake layers on two different 6″ cake boards).
  2. Start to create each tier one at a time; add about 1 cup frosting to the middle of an 8″ cake. Spread it so that it touches the sides, then place a second half of the cake on top. Lightly frost the sides and top of the cake, creating more of a naked cake look so that you’ll have enough frosting at the end. Repeat for the remaining tiers, including the 6″ layers. You should have about 2 cups of frosting still leftover for the blue layer. When you’re done with each tier, place them into the fridge to chill.
  3. Once you’ve finished creating the tiers, make sure they are all chilling in the fridge (at least 10 minutes). Now you’ll make the vegan blue buttercream. Add in the blue plant based food dye to the bowl and use a hand mixer to evenly distribute the color. Prepare the piping tip and spoon the buttercream into the piping bag. Place the piping bag into the fridge to chill as well.
  4. Prepare the dowels. Remove one 8″ cake tier from the fridge, and measure the dowel in the cake. You’ll do this by sticking the dowel into the cake and seeing where the frosting meets it. Score the dowel and remove from the cake. Place the cake back into the fridge, and make four dowels all at the size that you’ve scored. Repeat for the 6″ cake tier, only making two dowels however (you won’t need to dowel the top layer). 
  5. Build the cake: remove the blue frosting bag from the fridge and set aside. Place one 8″ cake tier onto your desired cake plate or cake stand. Place two dowels towards the middle of the cake (see picture in the post). Carefully place the second 8″ cake tier slightly crooked and to the side on top of the bottom layer. Dowel that layer as well, and place the 6″ cake tier more towards the middle of the cake, on top. Dowel the cake and place the last tier on top, slightly crooked but enough that it will balance.
  6. Pipe the blue frosting on the creases of the cake, where the cake boards meet the frosting. Pipe enough to cover the cracks, creating little drips of frosting like the movie.
  7. Top with candles and serve!
  8. To serve the cake: carefully remove the top cake layer and slice. To serve each layer, remember to remove the dowels. 

Notes

Equipment:

Flour: Make sure that you add in a tsp of arrowroot powder or cornstarch if using gluten free 1-to-1 baking flour. This will give the flour more like a cake flour texture when baked- very tender and moist!

Coconut sugar: If you use coconut sugar, your cake will be slightly tanner in color- but still delicious!

Vegan Buttercream: if you would like to do a vegan cream cheese frosting instead, you can swap in 2 cups vegan cream cheese (a total of 2 cups cream cheese and 2 cups butter).