hello kitty floral wreath crown cake

It's my birthday month! Hooray!

One of my favorite things about my birthday month is all the coupons that I get from all of my favorite stores! And of course, celebrating with my friends and family! But also one of my favorite things is that I get to make myself a cake, and I try to think of a different Hello Kitty design every year. Last year when it was time to make my birthday cake, I was really into make floral wreath cakes, so I thought it would be really cool to make a Hello Kitty floral wreath cake, where the wreath in essense becomes a crown wreath for Hello Kitty!

I love coffee chiffon cake, and I love Neapolitan cakes, so for the cake insides I decided to do a Neapolitan combination of coffee (instead of chocolate), vanilla, and strawberry chiffon cakes. And then I filled each layer with freshly whipped cream.

For the frosting, I chose to do a Swiss Meringue buttercream (you can find the recipe in my book, The Hello Kitty Baking Book!) because I wanted something light and not too sweet, and I didn't want it to melt too quickly like a whipped cream frosting does.

After covering the top and sides of the cake with a quick crumb coat, letting it chill in the fridge for 30 minutes, and then doing a final smooth coat, it was ready to decorate!

I started by piping black frosting for the eyes and the whiskers, using a disposable pastry bag fitted with a small round tip, and then using a similar tip to pipe the nose with yellow frosting.

For the ears I attached fondant shapes that I had cut out ahead of time (you'll need to let it air dry for at least a day or two, so that the fondant is no longer floppy and will stand up on it's own). Since I knew I would be adding buttercream flowers, I piped a ring of whipped cream along the perimeter of the top of the cake, which helped to hold up the ears as well.

Then I added my buttercream flowers, which I had piped ahead of time and let harden in the freezer. (You can see more on this technique here). I chose to do a deep pink and white flowers, partly to match the inside of the cake, and partly because I like the color combo!

To finish it off, I piped dark green buttercream leaves (using this leaf tip) to fill in the gaps in between the flowers, and then it was done!



Doesn't Hello Kitty look so pretty with a floral wreath crown?!

And now, for the inside of the cake.

The cake was soft and airy and light, with just the perfect amount of sweetness.

Happy Birthday to me!

     

hello kitty macaron cake with neapolitan layers (and nut-free sesame seed macarons!)

I've been wanting to make a macaron cake for a long time now, ever since I saw this snowman macaron cake at Rasberri Cupcakes. (And even before that, when I saw her heart macaron cake! SO adorable!) Since Hello Kitty macarons are my thing, I decided to make a Hello Kitty macaron cake for my birthday this past April! And since I've been obsessed with neapolitan ever since making my daughter's neapolitan birthday cupcakes, I decided to make it a neapolitan cake! Wheee!

Since my daughter is severely allergic to all nuts, and macarons are normally made with almond flour, I set out to find a nut-free recipe to use since I wanted her to be able to enjoy a slice of my birthday cake. So I ended up trying out this recipe at Pizza Rossa, which uses ground-up sesame seeds instead of almond flour!

Since these macarons were going on top of a neapolitan cake, I decided to fill my macarons with a rich strawberry chocolate ganache (recipe here!)

The sesame in the macarons ended up tasting delicious, and with the strawberry chocolate ganache the combination reminded me of eating a peanut butter, strawberry jam, and chocolate sandwich! (Which is sorta scary to me because my daughter is severely allergic to peanuts!)

The only thing I didn't like was that I had used roasted sesame seeds, which caused lots of dark specks in my macaron shell, so next time I would use raw sesame seeds instead.

Once the macarons were done, I moved on to the cake! I wanted a light and fluffy neapolitan cake, so I found use this neapolitan sponge cake recipe at Not Quite Nigella (except I cut the recipe in half because I didn't want my layers so tall).

Once I had my vanilla, strawberry, and chocolate batters in my ungreased 8-inch pans, I baked them and let them cool.

To assemble, I started with the chocolate layer, which I topped with rich chocolate mousse.

Then came the vanilla cake layer ,which I topped with a vanilla whipped cream.

And finally the strawberry layer, which I topped with a strawberry whipped cream.

Then I proceeded to cover the sides and top of the cake with strawberry whipped cream. I'm telling you guys, this stuff tastes just like strawberry ice cream! So good!

And finally, I added my nut-free Hello Kitty macarons.

WHEEEEEE!

This is probably my most favorite Hello Kitty birthday cake. Well, besides this ombre Hello Kitty cake. And this Hello Kitty baked alaska.

Oh who am I kidding, I love all Hello Kitty cakes!!!

And the neapolitan inside! LOVE! :)

Happy Birthday to all you April babies out there!

neapolitan cupcakes

While I made this tokidoki unicorn cake that I made for my daughter's 5th birthday party, I still had to make cupcake for her class party at school! And after seeing these neapolitan cupcakes from Cooking Classy, I couldn't get them out of my head! So I of course had to make them for my Melodie!

Two different batters were made for the cupcake - for the bottom a moist chocolate cupcake, and for the top a fluffy vanilla cupcake.

During baking, the chocolate batter must have bubbled up to the top to make little spots in the vanilla batter, an unintentional effect which I actually thought was really cute because it reminded me of leopard spots!

Instead of the strawberry frosting in the original recipe, I decided that I wanted a light and fluffy strawberry whipped cream for my frosting, which I loved because it ended up tasting like strawberry ice cream! So I whipped up some heavy whipping cream, a bit of confectioner's sugar, a few spoonfulls of strawberry jam, and a few drops of strawberry extract. And some vanilla extract and a pinch of salt.

I used this Wilton star tip to pipe on the frosting in a cute and swirly design.

Look how cute they are when unwrapped!

Cut in half, you can see how the chocolate batter must have bubbled up into the white batter. But no matter, I still thought they were adorable.

And the taste? They overwhelmingly reminded me of neapolitan ice cream sandwiches, especially because of the strawberry whipped cream!

Happy birthday my little Melodie! Hope you enjoyed your birthday cupcakes!