hello kitty pink basketweave cupcakes (and a hello kitty cupcake workshop!)

The first time I made these Hello Kitty basketweave cupcakes was back in 2010, when I made fresh strawberry Hello Kitty cupcakes with pink basketweave frosting for my friend Hsing's birthday! Since then I have made them several times (see here and here for more), and they even almost made it into my book, The Hello Kitty Baking Book! While we ended up going with cupcake options that were simpler, you can still find a basketweave tutorial and a pink basketweave cake in the book!

Then around the time that the Hello Kitty exhibit opened (at the Japanese National American Museum), I was contacted about giving a couple of workshops. One was a cookie decorating workshop which I ended up giving at Hello Kitty Con, and the other was a cupcake decorating workshop which I gave at the museum last month! I decided to show everyone how to pipe these basketweave cupcakes, even though they were cut from the book, because you can use the techinque in so many ways! Even the technique of piping the little Hello Kitty face can be used with many things, such as on the sides of a cake, in piping Hello Kitty meringue cookies, and making Hello Kitty macarons!

To prep for the workshop, I baked 6 dozen chocolate cupcakes (recipe in the book!) and prepped over a hundred piping bags with tinted buttercream frosting (recipe also in the book!).

Here's the setup of each station at the workshop.

And here's the workshop in progress! 

After the workshop, the museum had a book signing event to promote the book. This was super fun, as I got to talk with so many different people and discuss our love of Hello Kitty and baking! :)

And while I was giving the workshop and signing books, my sweet husband took our two oldest kids to see the Hello Kitty exhibit! (Our youngest baby stayed home with Grandma).

I had so much fun giving the workshop and being at the museum, I'm going to be super sad when the exhibit ends in May! But I hear that the exhibit may be travelling soon, so keep an eye out for the exhibit in a city near you!

hello kitty cookies with soft frosting (and hello kitty con!)

For the first ever Hello Kitty Con this past October, I was super honored to be invited to give a cookie decorating workshop! I was asked to give 4 one-hour sessions on the first day of the convention, with about 35 participants per session. Plus, I would get a free badge to attend the convention for the entire weekend, and attend the opening night reception! Let me just say, I was out-of-this-world excited!

To prep for my workshop the week of, I baked 150 giant Hello Kitty cookies. And when I say that the cookies were giant, they were about the size of a piece of toast. That's because I used a Hello Kitty toast cutter to cut out my cookies! (See below with a quarter placed for size reference).

The cookie/toast cutter came with a stamper, that allowed met to get Hello Kitty's details on the cookie before baking. I would use these marks as a guide for the participants to decorate their cookies. I decided to use a "soft frosting" (buttercream) instead of a "hard frosting" (royal icing) so that the participants could learn this technique and also apply it in decorating a Hello Kitty cake, like this one! (see here, here, and here for other examples too!)

The first step was outlining the bow with black frosting.

Next came the rest of Hello Kitty's face and ears, plus her eyes and whiskers. And yellow frosting for the nose.

Next came piped stars in red frosting to fill in the bow.

And then piped stars in white frosting to fill in her face.

And there you have a delicious giant Hello Kitty cookie! Now for all you avid bakers out there, this probably seems pretty easy to do. But the majority of the participants in the workshops had never even held a piping bag before! So many people came up to me afterwards to tell me how much fun they had!

Besides baking all the cookies for the workshop (to be hand-carried on the plane), I also had to prep all the piping bags to be fitted with tips. That took forever.

And making the frosting and filling the bags took forever too! I can't believe I flew with all this frosting! I flew with two suitcases, and only half of one suitcase contained my actual clothes and things. The rest was frosting. Given that each suitcase was over 50 pounds, that's about 75 pounds of frosting that I flew down with me. CRAZY.

By the way, in order to hand carry my baked and undecorated cookies onto the plane, I had the cookies neatly stacked in bakery boxes, which were then stacked inside my handy cupcake courier. With my two suitcases full of frosting safely checked in, I was at the gate about to board the plane, when the flight attendant glanced at my cupcake courier and mentioned that the plane was really small, and that I might have to gate check my cookies. WHAT?! I almost had a heart attack - there was no way that my cookies would survive being gate checked! Luckily, I was able to shove the cupcake courier almost all the way under the seat in front of me, and for the remaining 1/3 of the cupcake courier sticking out I was able to use my legs to stealthily hide it. Whew! Disaster avoided.

Anyway, here's me before my cookie workshop. So excited!

And here's the setup that each participant had.

Here's a shot of the workshop in progress. It was so fun meeting everyone, and they were all so happy to be there! And I was so happy to be among fellow Hello Kitty lovers! It's like we all had an instant bond in Hello Kitty :)

Here's a shot of me and my bestie Reggie, and PAUL FRANK! He was there giving a workshop on making wall hangings, and decided to stop by. So I gave him a cookie. :)

I had such a wonderful time at Hello Kitty Con and everything that came with it - all things Hello Kitty including art, fashion, food, workshops, lectures, and panel. Just being surrounded by all things Hello Kitty, and being able to hang out with other people who also love Hello Kitty was seriously the best! Words can't express how thankful I was for this opportunity!

I'll end with some pictures that I took during my time at Hello Kitty Con! Enjoy!