rainbow sprinkle first birthday smash cake

In addition to the Princess Leia cookies that I made for my best friend Sue (who was having a Star Wars themed first birthday party for her daughter Leia), I also made a rainbow sprinkle smash cake for the birthday girl!

Since this would be the first time Leia would be trying cake, we didn't want to go with anything too overpowering, so we decided to go with a vanilla cake, filled with fresh strawberries and whipped cream. So I baked up two 6-inch vanilla cake layers (half of the recipe of the vanilla cake from my boo, The Hello Kitty Baking Book), let the cakes cool, and sliced each one into half horizontally, giving me four cake layers. Then I filled each layer with freshly whipped cream and chopped strawberries (normally I slice the strawberries, but in this case I wanted them in little pieces for baby Leia).

Then I whipped up a batch of cream cheese buttercream, and covered the tops and sides of the cake with it (crumb coat, then chilled for 30 minutes before applying the final coat).

The final touch was adding rainbow sprinkles!

In order to let the number 1 show up in white frosting through the sprinkles, I drew a big "1" on a piece of cardstock, then placed it on the cake before adding the sprinkles.

Here's a picture of the birthday girl enjoying her first cake ever!

Happy Birthday, Leia!!! Hugs and kisses from Auntie Michele! :)

princess leia cookies for a star wars birthday party

My best friend Sue named her daughter Leia, so of course for Leia's first birthday they had to throw a Star Wars themed party! To go with the theme, I made Princess Leia cookies for the favors. But instead of the heart sprinkle mouth from my previous attempt at Princess Leia cookies, we decided that a cute little smile would be more appropriate for baby Leia :)

Since I was making about 100 cookies, I made four batches of my favorite sugar cookie recipe (which is in my book, The Hello Kitty Baking Book!). I rolled out my dough and used a monkey cookie cutter to cut out shapes, which works perfectly for a Princess Leia shape!

After baking and cooling the cookies, I started on the royal icing (recipe also in my book!). I used brown stiff icing and a small round tip to pipe the outline of Princess Leia's hair, and then filled it in with brown runny icing.

For the face, I used ivory food coloring to tint my icing a flesh tone, and then used the ivory stiff icing to outline the face, and ivory runny icing to fill it in.

Once the cookies had dried for several hours, I used brown stiff icing to pipe the outline of the hair, as well as swirls for Princess Leia's hair buns.

Finally I used black stiff icing to add the eyes and cute little smile.

Aren't they cute? :)

Once the cookies had completely dried, I wrapped them individually in cellophane favor bags, and tied them closed with raffia.

Happy Birthday, little Leia! Hope you had fun at your party!

Stay tuned to see the smash cake that I made her as well!

coffee and cream ruffle cake

For my best friend Sue's birthday this past March, I wanted to make her a cake flavor that she hadn't tried yet. In the past, I've made her Hello Kitty ice cream cake, Boston cream pie cake, triple chocolate mousse cake, Hello Kitty chocolate mousse cake, and a piped petals chocolate mousse layer cake (for her baby shower). This time I decided to go with something lighter, so I went with a light and fluffy coffee chiffon cake!

After baking four 6-inch layers of coffee chiffon cake, I filled it with freshly whipped cream which I flavored with a paste made of espresso powder and hot water. Then also covered the tops and sides of my cake, and smoothed it out with an offset spatula.

For the decoration, I wanted something girly and frilly, so I chose to pipe continuous swirls of ruffles, as I did with my recent green tea ruffle cake and pink velvet ruffle cake.

I think this is definitely my current favorite way to decorate a cake!

The cake ended up being soft and moist, and reminded both of us of a mocha cake that my mom used to buy for me every year on my birthday, ever since junior high. (Too bad that bakery is no longer around, or else I would gladly continue that tradition!)

To one of the most fun and thoughtful people that I know, Happy Birthday, Sue!

princess leia cookies

While making these monkey cookies in my last post, I saw something in the monkey cutout shapes...

Princess Leia! Where the monkey ears could be her hair buns! Maybe it was because I had just been talking about making Princess Leia cookies with my friend Sue (who has a daughter named Leia). But whatever the case, it was all I could see while cutting out my monkey cookies!

So I had to try making at least one Princess Leia cookie, especially since I already had just the right colored royal icing that I needed from the monkey cookies!

So I outlined her hair with brown stiff icing, then filled them in with brown runny icing. Then I used tan stiff icing to outline her face, and filled it in with tan runny icing. Once all the icing had dried completely, I used brown stuff icing to pipe the swirls in her hair, and black stiff icing to pipe her eyes. And for her mouth, I simply used a red heart sprinkle! So cute!

When I make these for Sue (for real), I'll probably play around with the mouth to see what I like best. Maybe a piped red heart mouth? Or a piped thin black smile line? Stay tuned!

pink baby shower dessert table - sugar cookie favors, macarons, mini cheesecakes, and ruffle cake

In addition to the pink ruffle flower cake that I made for my best friend Sue's baby shower, I also made a few other items for the dessert table! I envisioned a girly pink table, with handmade tissue pom poms floating above the table, and some desserts on tiered cake stands beside the cake. In front would be onesie and flower sugar cookie favors, and the table would also include some fizzy pink lemonade in cute drinking jars. Here's the sketch that I made during the planning:

And here's how the desserts turned out!

The first dessert I started on was the sugar cookies a week before the shower, since I would be wrapping them individually as the favors and they keep really well this way. I decided on onesie cookies, as well as flower cookies (click on the links for more details).

I did the onesies in white, with pink outlines...

... and the flowers in pink, with white centers.

Then three days before the shower, I made the strawberry macarons, since they need at least 24 hours to set in the fridge.



Two days before the shower, I made the mini cheesecakes. The crust was made with a combination of chocolate graham cracker crumbs, and regular graham cracker crumbs...

... topped with a creamy cheesecake batter and baked in a water bath to avoid cracks ...

.. and the top was decorated with fresh strawberries and strawberry jam to hold them in place.



Finally, the day before the shower I baked and decorated the pink ruffle flower cake (shown in my my previous post).



During the week I also made these mint ice cubes to put in a cute pitcher of water.

The secret to getting the mint leaves to stay in the middle of the ice cube (instead of floating on top) was to fill the ice cube trays halfway and then place the mint leaf in the tray, freeze it to keep the leaf in place, and then fill the rest of the ice cube tray to trap the leaf perfectly in the middle!

Oh and I forgot to mention the handmade tissue pom poms! I started on them about a month before the shower - I would make one or two whenever I had some free time, using this tutorial at Martha Stewart. I ended up making ten poms (five above the dessert table, and five above the food table), and they turned out super cute! I ordered tissue paper in various colors from Amazon - pale pink, darker pink, and two different shades of gold.

I also bought cute pink stripe paper straws, wooden utensils, and cute paper plates and napkins on Amazon.

Sue loves afternoon tea, so the girls and I had decided to make that the theme. We made various tea sandwiches, deviled eggs, scones, tossed salad and fruit salad, and had a cheese and crackers platter as well. We also had four different flavors of tea at the drink station, as well as the mint ice water and more fizzy pink lemonade.

Everything turned out lovely and we had such a great time celebrating Sue and her baby girl on the way!

Happy baby shower, Sue!!! We love you!