coffee chiffon cake with dark chocolate sail sculpture

I love to make birthday cakes for my friends, and at one point last year I became obsessed with making chocolate sculptures to decorate my birthday cakes with! I had seen it all over Instagram and fell in love with the way they added such artistry to cakes, in such a free-form and abstract way. 

The first of many chocolate sculpture cakes that I ended up making throughout the year, this one was for my friend Hsing, who I met at work years and years ago. At the time we were the only females on our team, and although we are no longer at the same company, we still make it a point to meet for lunches several times throughout the year.

I typically make chiffon cakes for Hsing, since she she likes the type of light and airy cake that you can commonly find at Asian bakeries. This time I decided to make a coffee chiffon cake, filled and frosted with espresso whipped cream.

I typically do a crumb coat of frosting, then let it chill in the fridge for at least a half our, before adding a second coat of frosting and smoothing it out completely with an offset spatula.

While the assembled and frosted cake chilled in the fridge, I got started on making the topper. In a double boiler, I melted dark chocolate with a bit of coconut oil, and then poured it out onto a baking sheet lined with a silicone liner. Then I positioned the silicone liner insde of a glass bowl, using binder clips to secure it in a way that would provide an interesting shape to the chocolate.

Once the chocolate had cooled, I removed the binder clips and carefully removed the silicone liner, giving me a chocolate sculpture!

I secured it to the top of the cake with a bit of the espresso whipped cream, and then it was done!

I love the simplicity of this type of decorative cake topper, plus it's edible!

Hope you had a Happy Birthday, Hsing!

pink sprinkles birthday cake with gold birthday topper

My friend Hsing has a daughter named Avery, who just had a birthday this past February! And I was beyond flattered when she asked me to make her a birthday cake! She sent me a picture of a adorable pink cake, with rainbow sprinkles and a gold birthday cake topper, so I set out to make exactly that!

I started with my favorite chocolate cake recipe (which you can find in my book, The Hello Kitty Baking Book!), which I halved and baked in two 6-inch round cake pans. Once they were cool, I sliced them in half horizontally to give me four cake layers, and then filled each layer with freshly whipped cream and sliced strawberries.

Then I whipped up a batch of cream cheese frosting, which I tinted with pink gel-based food coloring, and then covered the top and sides of the cake with a quick crumb coat.

After letting the cake chill in the fridge for 30 minutes, I did a final coat, and smoothed it out as best as I could with a long metal spatula.

For whatever reason, I had a hard time smoothing out the top of the cake this time. It could have been that the weather was super warm, or maybe it was that it was the middle of the night and I was super tired, but it just turned out way messier than I had wanted! But I went ahead and added the rainbow sprinkles to the bottom of the cake, and then let it chill overnight.

In the morning I was ready to add the gold acrylic cake topper, which I had bought a few weeks earlier on Etsy.

It was the perfect finishing touch!

Hope you had a happy Birthday, Avery!

tiramisu ice cream

My friend Hsing recently made tiramisu ice cream, and when I tasted it I knew that I wanted to make it too!  Not long after that, I had the perfect opportunity - my cousin Angie was coming to visit and I know that she loves boozy desserts, so I decided to make it for her.

The source was, once again, David Lebovitz's book "The Perfect Scoop".  The ice cream base included Kahlua and rum, as well as mascarpone cream to create a creamy richness.  I also made a mocha ripple (made by simmering espresso, cocoa powder, vanilla, sugar, and corn syrup), which was layered into the ice cream after it was done churning.

The resulting combination of flavors was delicious!  Although I would have loved more coffee flavor, so next time I'll try adding some espresso to the ice cream base as well.

hello kitty pocket pies

After making heart-shaped pocket pies for Valentine's Day last week, it dawned on me that I could make pocket pies in any shape I wanted!  I could just use large cookie cutters to cut out the shape, and a fork to crimp the edges - no pocket pie mold required!  So I made Hello Kitty pocket pies.  (You must have noticed my slight obsession with Hello Kitty by now -see my Hello Kitty cake, another cake, cupcakes, mini cupcakes, ice cream cake, and cake pops!)

Using my largest Hello Kitty cookie cutter, I cut out pie crust for the tops and bottoms of the pies, then filled them with my apple pie filling (diced apples, flour, sugar, salt, cinnamon, and ground cloves).

The eyes, nose and bow served as my steam vents (so that the crust wouldn't get soggy during baking).  After crimping the edges with a fork, brushing with egg wash, and sprinkling some sandling sugar on top, I baked them at 400 F for 20 minutes.  And out came Hello Kitty apple pie!

I made a couple of these for my friend Hsing to give to her daughter Avery (she just turned 6!), and I also made a couple for my friend Karyn in exchange for an adorable clippie (check out her handmade clippies at Zoette Boutique!).  I also froze a couple so that I could bake them off whenever we want apple pie.

I can't wait to try making pocket pies with other shapes too! (Although nothing beats Hello Kitty!)

*** Update:
You can now find my recipe for Hello Kitty Pocket Apple Pie and Pocket Pies in my new book, "The Hello Kitty Baking Book"! Enjoy!

pink hello kitty cake

My friend Hsing asked me to make a Hello Kitty cake for her friend's daughter's birthday.  Since I had made pink strawberry Hello Kitty cupcakes for Hsing's birthday a few months ago, I immediately wanted to make the same pink frosting for this cake!  So I decided on a chocolate layer cake with fresh strawberry buttercream.

After the crumb-coating, I piped a basketweave design along the sides, and then piped a decorative rope border around the top.

Then I piped Hello Kitty in white buttercream, with a red bow and nose.

Right before Hsing came to pick up the cake, I realized that I had forgotten to pipe Hello Kitty's whiskers!  Oops!  I pointed it out to her, and she said she wouldn't have noticed had I not said anything, so hopefully no one else noticed either!

*** Update:
You can now find my recipe for Pink Hello Kitty Cake in my new book, "The Hello Kitty Baking Book"! Enjoy!

hello kitty ice cream cake

Since my last couple blog entries were Hello Kitty related, I wanted to also show you the "hello kitty" cakes I've been making.  I made this ice-cream cake for my best friend Sue's birthday back in March.  It was a chocolate cake with homemade coffee-oreo ice cream - my favorite combination!

Before that, I had made this one for my friend Hsing last October.  It was a chocolate cake also with homemade mint oreo ice cream.

And I also made this mini 6-inch ice-cream cake for my friend Diana last February. It was a chocolate cake again, but I can't remember what ice-cream flavor I made.  I think it was my plain coffee ice-cream?

I think next I'm going to make something "hello kitty" for my daughter's first birthday, in December.  I need to start brainstorming for some new ideas!

*** Update:
You can now find my recipe for Hello Kitty Ice Cream Cake in my new book, "The Hello Kitty Baking Book"! Enjoy!

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!