Thursday, October 21, 2010

fresh strawberry hello kitty cupcakes


Today is my friend Hsing's birthday, and since we both love Hello Kitty, I wanted to make her Hello Kitty cupcakes.  Last year I made her a Hello Kitty ice cream cake - chocolate cake with homemade mint oreo ice cream (a post is in the works on that one!), so this year I wanted to do something totally different.

I pictured doing a pink frosting with a white Hello Kitty piped on top - similar to the duckie cupcakes I did for Naomi's mini baby shower - so I decided that a fresh strawberry buttercream would be perfect.  For the cupcake, I wanted to try a new recipe (I had found one for a new dark chocolate cupcake that I had been dying to try), and while it came out very moist, the texture was dense and more like a brownie cake - not what I was going for.  So I went with a strawberry cupcake instead, which called for fresh finely diced strawberries folded into the batter (recipe from Martha Stewart's book "Cupcakes"!).  The end result was a delicate white cupcake with melty bits of fresh strawberry inside - yum!


For the frosting, I pureed fresh strawberries in the food processor, and added it to my standard buttercream.  This made it a nice pale pink, but since I was going to pipe Hello Kitty in white, I wanted a darker pink shade, so I added a tiny bit of pink food coloring.

Then I made another batch of white buttercream for Hello Kitty's face, and added red food coloring for the bow and nose, and black/brown coloring for the and eyes and whiskers.


I had lots of extra strawberry buttercream left over, so I piped some flowers on top of the cakey brownie cupcakes (can't let those go to waste!).


While the strawberry cupcake and strawberry buttercream combination were good together, I thought the frosting made everything a tad too sweet, so I think next time I'll go with a strawberry cream cheese frosting instead.  Or maybe even a honey cream cheese frosting.  I just love the tang in a nice cream cheese frosting!

Anyway, Happy Birthday Hsing!  Hope you (and Avery and Chenchi) enjoyed the cupcakes!


13 comments:

  1. Thank you so much! we love them! They are super super cute and yummy. You are just so talented! Love, Hsing

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  2. Thanks so much for having the Hello Kitty cupcakes on here, I will definitely try to make these right now...was searching for Hello Kitty deco on cup cakes everywhere but yours look really cute. :-)

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  3. @Sweetie1313 - Thanks! Let me know how they turn out! I also have a couple of other posts on Hello Kitty cupcakes incase you want to check them out, see:

    http://i-heart-baking.blogspot.com/2011/04/more-hello-kitty-cupcakes.html

    and:

    http://i-heart-baking.blogspot.com/2010/12/hello-kitty-mini-cupcakes.html

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  4. Thanks so much for the links - I love the mini cupcakes. I will post pictures of my cupcakes on our blog if you'd like to follow. :-) I'm your newest follower.

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  5. Sorry, this is our blog:

    http://helpfuldaddy.blogspot.com

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  6. Those are adorable! I love them :D I also love the flowers on the brownie cupcakes. So pretty!

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  7. I love your pictures! You have got some talent and I would love to try these! Thanks for sharing!!

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  8. How did you make the purple flowers on the chocolate cupcakes? Love the blog!!

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    Replies
    1. @Katie - so glad you're enjoying the blog! :)

      for the flowers i used a wilton petal tip #104:
      http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004AT6WBI/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=iheartbaking-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B004AT6WBI

      also here's a good tutorial at wilton that shows how to pipe a flower:
      http://www.wilton.com/technique/Wild-Rose

      good luck! let me know how it turns out!

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  9. Hi! Your creations are ao genuinely amazing!
    I would like to know how did you the basket weave frosting on your oh-so-very-cute hello kitty cupcakes? I really want to learn how to do that. Really appreciate your help to a newbie like me. :)

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    Replies
    1. @Crislynne Recio - thank you! here's a quick tutorial at the wilton site on how to do basketweave:
      http://www.wilton.com/technique/Basketweave
      good luck! :)

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  10. I know I'm pretty late on this post, but your cupcakes are amazing!
    How did you do the basket weave pattern on the cupcakes?

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    Replies
    1. thanks @Anonymous! see this link on the basic basketweave:
      http://www.wilton.com/technique/Basketweave
      enjoy!

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