banana cream birthday cake with handmade fondant monkey topper

The first time I made something for Julieta, I made various Hello Kitty desserts for the dessert table at her bridal shower. I had never met her before, and she had found me through the blog. I was delighted to be making Hello Kitty dessert for a fellow Hello Kitty lover!

Before I knew it, Julieta was contacting me about making baseball cookies, this time for her baby shower! And then this past year, she asked me to make a monkey cake, this time for her son's first birthday party! How time flies! And how exciting it is to me that I got to make goodies for her for such major milestones!

A few weeks before the party, I started on making the fondant monkey, as it would need time to dry completely. I used Wilton fondant for this, tinted chocolate brown with a tiny bit of black to give it a deeper brown. I rolled out and shaped all the parts I would need, and used a bit of water to attach them together.

For the monkey's face, I tinted the fondant with ivory, rolled out a snout, and used a heart-shaped cookie cutter to create the part of the face around the eyes.

After adding an ivory tummy and feet, I used an edible marker to draw on the eyes and the nose.

Hey little guy, you're cute!

For the cake, Julieta wanted a bananas and cream cake. So when it was time to make the cake, I baked up two 10-inch round vanilla cakes (recipe from my book, The Hello Kitty Baking Book), and sliced each cake in half horizontally to give me four cake layers. Then I filled each layer with freshly whipped cream and sliced bananas.





I ended up not using the fourth cake layer, as it would have ended up too tall of a cake! So I stopped at three layers.

The party colors would be yellow and light green, so I made bright yellow buttercream, and added a light green beaded border. Then I used a small round tip with chocolate brown frosting to pipe the baby's name.

And the final touch - the fondant monkey topper!

Hope the little guy enjoyed his monkey cake! Happy Birthday, Daniel!

baseball cookies and onesie cookies

Remember these pastel Hello Kitty cookies, macarons, and mini cupcakes that I made for a bridal shower a couple of years ago? Well recently that bride contacted me about making goodies again ... this time for her baby shower! So exciting!!!

She had originally wanted a cake and cookies with a baseball theme, but the weekend of the baby shower was the same weekend that I was to be in LA to give a Hello Kitty cupcake workshop. So she opted for just the cookies to be done several days in advance, as I could wrap each one individually to keep them fresh for the baby shower.

For the baseball cookies, I used my go-to sugar cookie recipe (which can be found in my book, The Hello Kitty Baking Book!), rolled the dough out to 1/8 inch thick, and cut out shapes with a 3.5 inch round cookie cutter. Then after baking and cooling, I whipped up a batch of royal icing (recipe also in the book!), piped a circle outline with stiff icing, and then filled it in with runny icing.

After the white icing had dried for several hours, I used red stiff icing and a Wilton #2 tip to pipe my baseball stitches on the cookies.

I repeated the same process for the onesie cookies, except with this onesie cookie cutter, and with blue icing for the onesie details.

So cute!

Congratulations Julieta! Hope you had a wonderful baby shower!

pastel hello kitty cookies, macarons, and bow cupcakes for a bridal shower dessert table

Way back in December of last year, I was contacted by a bride-to-be named Julieta, who had been following my blog and asked me about making goodies for her bridal shower dessert table.  When I found out that: a) she wanted Hello Kitty themed desserts, and b) she lives about 10 miles from me, I couldn't refuse!  At the time I was still pregnant with my third baby and due in February, but her bridal shower was set for April so I convinced myself that it would be fine, since my newborn would be about 2 months old by then.  But boy oh boy, when April rolled around, I was not prepared for the amount of work and lack of sleep that I was in for!

In the chunks of time that I had available for baking, I started with the cookies, since they could be made days in advance and would still be fresh.  We had decided on Hello Kitty cookies with pastel bows, as well as "J" and "D" monogram cookies after the bride and groom's names.  So I found all the cookie cutters that I would need, and baked up my favorite sugar cookie recipe.

For the Hello Kitty cookies, the steps were pretty much the same as the Hello Kitty cookies that I made last summer, except this time the bows would be pastel shades of mint, yellow, and peach.

As for the "J" and "D" cookies, she had decided on pastel mint and peach for the letters, with a white beaded border (just like the monogram cookies that I had made last year for my cousin's wedding favors).

Next up were Hello Kitty macarons, which could be made 2 days in advance, especially since the macarons needed "age" for at least 24 hours in the refrigerator to ensure the proper consistency.

See links here, here, and here for tutorials on making my Hello Kitty macarons.

Once the cookies and macarons were done, I only had one more dessert to make - mini cupcakes decorated with Hello Kitty bows!  These I made the night before her bridal shower.  I started with my favorite chocolate cake recipe, which I baked in mini muffin tins and liners.

For the frosting, I whipped up my favorite cream cheese frosting, and divided it in portions to be colored pastel mint, yellow, pink, and peach.  Then I used white frosting to outline my Hello Kitty bows, and filled them in with little dots of colored frosting, using a small round Wilton tip #3.

And then I was finally done.  After an entire week of juggling three kids and baking nonstop, I could finally rest.  Well, as much as one could rest with a 2-month old newborn, but that's another story.  It was all worth it though, because I loved how all the desserts looked together in the end!

Happy bridal shower, Julieta!  Hope you enjoyed the goodies!

*** Update:
You can now find my recipes for Hello Kitty Macarons, Hello Kitty Cookies, and Hello Kitty Mini Cupcakes in my new book, "The Hello Kitty Baking Book"! Enjoy!