unicorn cupcakes

Sometime last year, my friend Monica asked me to make unicorn cupcakes for her goddaughter. She wanted pastel swirl frosting, topped with little fondant unicorn horn toppers. We decided that I'd make chocolate cupcakes with cream cheese frosting, and I bought gold cupcake liners to match the gold unicorn horns!

About a week in advance, I started making the fondant toppers, in order to give them time to dry out. I tinted my fondant with gold gel-based food coloring, and then brushed on gold luster dust to give it a shiny gold sheen. I also made little ears for the unicorns, using a petunia flower cookie cutter (similar to this one) and then cutting out the petals to make ears.

Then when it was time to bake the cupcakes, I made my favorite chocolate cupcake batter (recipe in my book, The Hello Kitty Baking Book!), and baked them in my new shiny gold cupcakes liners. Once they were cool, I whipped up some cream cheese frosting (recipe also in my book!) and divided it into three portions. Then I tinted each portion with yellow, pink, and green (with a teeny bit of blue in it, to give it more of an aqua feel).

Then I fitted a pastry bag with a large star tip, and when filling the pastry bag, I filled it with all three colors of frosting, to give it that swirl effect.

These colors make me so happy!

Then it was time to add my fondant decorations. I placed a unicorn horn in the middle, with ears on either side.

 

 
Cute, right?

 
I hope Monica's goddaughter enjoyed them as much as I enjoyed making them! Happy Birthday!

tangled rapunzel birthday cake with buttercream flowers

I've baked a lot of fun goodies for my friend Monica over the past few years, including pool party piggy cookies and a piggy cake, a chevron gender reveal cake, graduation cap cookies, a Hello Kitty pom pom cake, a circus carnival baby shower cake, and teapot cookies, but this one has to be my favorite so far! Her daughter absolutely loves the movie Tangled, so she asked me to make her a Tangled Rapunzel cake for her birthday! After discussing a few options, we decided that we would use this adorable Funko Pop Rapunzel doll as the cake topper, and I would continue Rapunzel's long hair down and around the cake. 

As for the cake itself, she chose a vanilla cake with lemon whipped cream and fresh blueberries. So I baked up my favorite vanilla cake (recipe in my book, The Hello Kitty Baking Book!) in two 8-inch round cake pans, and baked them at 350F until golden brown. 

Once cooled, I sliced them in half horizontally, giving me four layers, and then topped each layer with fresh whipped cream (spiked with fresh lemon zest and lemon juice) and fresh blueberries.

Then I whipped up a batch of cream cheese buttercream, and covered the top and sides of the cake with it.

I usually do a quick crumb coat of frosting, let it chill in the fridge for 30 minutes or so, and then do a final coat of frosting, smoothing out the sides with a long metal spatula while using a long offset spatula for the top.

Then I piped a neat beaded border along the bottom, using a disposable pastry bag fitted with a medium round tip.

Next came the Rapunzel topper, which I attached with a bit of frosting on the bottom.

Then came buttercream flowers, which I had piped in advanced onto pieces of waxed paper, and then chilled in the freezer until they were hard and easy to handle.

For Rapunzel's hair, I tinted some frosting with golden yellow gel-based food coloring, and then used a star tip to pipe her long hair down and around the side of the cake.



I also used forest green tinted frosting and a leaf tip to pipe some leaves in between the buttercream flowers.

And then final step was to pipe long branches of ivy leaves down the sides of the cake as well.

Seriously, one of my favorite cakes to make so far!

Hope you enjoyed your cake and had a fantastic birthday, Viviana!

teapot tea party cookies with brush embroidery flowers

 

Sometime last year, my friend Monica asked me to make teapot cookie favors for her daughter's afternoon tea themed birthday party, and after collaborating back and forth over text, we decided to go with pink and blue teapot cookies with brush embroidery flowers!

I started by making my favorite sugar cookies (recipe in my book, The Hello Kitty Baking Book!) and cutting out the cookies with a teapot cookie cutter. After baking them and letting them cool, I whipped up a batch of royal icing (recipe also in my book!). Using gel-based food coloring, I tinted a portion of the icing pink (using Americolor soft pink), another portion blue (using Americolor sky blue), and left the last portion white. Then with stiff pink icing in a disposable piping bag and a small round tip, I outlined half of the cookies in pink ...

... and then filled them in with runny pink icing.

Then I did the same with the other half of the cookies except with blue icing. Once the icing had dried for several hours, I was ready to pipe on the details, including the brush embroidery. This is a technique where you pipe an outline with stiff icing, and then use a (slightly damp) food-safe brush to drag the edges of the outline towards the center, giving a cool painted effect.

Here's how it looked with just the outline of the flower and accompanying leaf:

And here's how it looked after I used a brush to drag the edges towards the center. I also added a few dots of stiff white icing in the center of each flower.

After letting the brush embroidery and details dry, they were done!

Enjoy!

circus carnival cake with fondant mustache baby topper

Remember this chevron baby gender reveal cake that I did for my friend Monica? Well when it was finally time for the baby shower last fall, they asked me to make the baby shower cake as well! The shower was going to have a circus theme, so Monica sent me a pictures of of circus cakes that she wanted me to replicate. The two main attractions of the cake would be the toppers - one would be a fondant baby with a mustache, and the other would be a fondant lion.

For the fondant baby, I shaped the baby's head and body out of fondant colored with ivory gel-based food coloring, and also rolled out pieces for the arms and feet. For the diaper, I rolled out a long strip and wrapped it around the baby.

And for the face, I used food markers to draw on the eyes, mustache and smile. 

For the lion, I colored fondant with orange and golden yellow food coloring, and then rolled them out. For the head I used a circle cookie cutter, and for the man I used a flower cookie cutter, but for the rest I just used a knife to cut out the shapes that I needed (the bangs, tail, ears, etc).

The cake itself was a chocolate cake, filled with fresh strawberries and whipped cream. You've seen me do this several times before, so I only have an instragram photo of this part :)

The top tier of the cake was a 6-inch cake, which I covered with cream cheese buttercream.

I used this basketweave tip to pipe circus-like verticle stripes with red frosting.

The bottom tier was a 10-inch cake, which I covered in blue cream cheese buttercream, and then piped a rainbow border along the bottom of the cake. (I originally only did red, orange, yellow, and green, but it ended up looking more "candyland" than "circus", so later on I also added blue to the border).

To support the top tier of the cake, I used five bamboo skewers - four of them were cut to the height of the cake for the top tier to rest on, and the fifth was full length and would go through the center of the top tier, to ensure that it didn't fall or slide off.

Then I piped large rainbow polka dots to the bottom tier, before assembling the tiers and adding the toppers. (I also added a little curl to the top of the baby's head, at the request of the mom-to-be!)

When I went to deliver the cake to the baby shower, I was blown away by all of the circus-themed decorations - everything was so adorable! From the mustache tablecloth, to the giant marquee circus letters at the dessert table, the circus-themed games, photo booth, and table decorations, everything looked perfect!

Congratulations Sofi!

large pastel hello kitty pom pom cake

Last weekend was Hello Kitty's 40th birthday! (It was on November 1st, to be exact!) I was lucky enough to be a part of her birthday celebration by giving a cookie decorating workshop at the first ever Hello Kitty Con, a 4-day extravaganza featuring Hello Kitty products, pop-up shops, food, fashion, workshops, panels, art exhibits, and so much more!

I'll have more details on Hello Kitty Con in a later post, but in honor of Hello Kitty's birthday I thought it would be the perfect time to share this pastel pom-pom cake with you! I actually made it for my friend Monica, for her daughter Izzy's birthday party. It was inspired by a previous pastel pom cake that I had made for my daughter Melodie, but this time I made a large 10-inch chocolate cake, which I filled with chocolate mousse.

Once the cake and filled mousse had chilled in the fridge overnight, I whipped up two batches of cream cheese frosting (recipe in my book!), and did a quick crumb coat all over the sides and top of my assembled cake.

Then I colored part of my frosting black, and piped a large Hello Kitty on the top of my cake.

I divided the rest of my frosting (after setting aside a bit of white frosting to be used later), and colored them all different shades of pastel colors.

Then I used a medium star tip to fill in the bow with pink frosting, and the face with the reserved white frosting.

Once I filled piping bags with the rest of the colored frosting, I was ready to fill the rest of the cake with pastel piped stars!

Hours later, I was done. (Yes, it took hours! I had to return the cake and frosting to the fridge several times to avoid melted frosting!)

But all the hours of piping stars was worth it - I loved the end result! So cute and pastel and perfect for a birthday party!

Monica later told me that when she asked her daughter what her favorite part of her birthday party was, she had answered, "the CAKE!". Hearing that made my heart swell. :)

Happy Birthday, Izzy! And Happy Birthday, Hello Kitty!