ombre watercolor camouflage inspired cake

The past few years, I've always made some sort of camouflage cake for my husband Grant's birthday every year. Such as this camouflage petal cake, or this pom pom camouflage cake, as well as this piped shells camouflage cake (which by the way, was also had a camouflage surprise, inside the cake!). This year I wanted to do something simple, and since I recently fell in love with this watercolor cake by Sweetapolita, I decided to make a camouflage-inspired watercolor cake!

I had also recently made this vanilla cake with fresh blueberries and lemon whipped cream, and decided to make it again for the inside of the cake. So I baked up two 6-inch vanilla cake layers (half batch of the vanilla cake recipe in my book, The Hello Kitty Baking Book), and divided each layer in half horizontally, giving me four layers. Then I whipped up a batch of freshly whipped cream, flavored with fresh lemon zest and lemon juice, and filled each layer with the lemon whipped cream and fresh blueberries.

Next, I made my camouflage colors - I divided the remaining whipped cream into thirds, left one portion white, tinted the second portion green, and the third portion brown. Then using an offset spatula, I covered the top third of my cake with white whipped cream, the middle third with green whipped cream, and the bottom third with brown whipped cream.

Then I smooth it all out (a long metal spatula and a rotating cake stand works great for this!).

I loved it! Simple, rustic, and camouflage-ish.

And the inside! So cute with the dots of fresh blueberries.

Happy Birthday, my Love! Hope you enjoyed yet another camouflage cake on your special day! :)

pink ombre rose cake

A friend of mine contacted me a couple months ago about making a pretty cake for her friend's baby shower, and of course I couldn't refuse!  We decided on a 6-inch pink ombre rose cake, where the inside would be pink ombre layers as well.  So I used my favorite vanilla cake recipe from Sweetapolita, and divided the batter into thirds.  One was colored a deep pink, the second a soft pink, and the third I left white.

Once the cake layers were baked and cooled, I made a small batch of freshly whipped cream for the filling.  Then I began assembling my cake - dark pink cake layer on the bottom, whipped cream, soft pink layer in the middle, more whipped cream, and then topped it with the white cake layer.  Then I whipped up a batch of cream cheese buttercream, and did a quick crumb coat over the entire cake.

I divided the remaining frosting into thirds and colored them to match the cake layers.  And then I was ready to start piping my roses!

This is one of my favorite cakes to make, as you can tell from all the past rose cakes that I've made - see links for my lavender rose cake, white rose cake with red velvet and cheesecake inside, orange pumpkin rose cake, and purple ombre rose cake - all done following this awesome tutorial from I Am Baker!

I hope the guest of honor liked her cake!!!

purple ombre roses cake

My friend H introduced me to her friend S a few years ago, the day that the three of us stood in line at Macy's for hours to meet Sarah Jessica Parker at a perfume signing event.  It was so much fun!

After that day, I've bumped into S here and there, and we eventually discovered that we share a love for food and food photography.  Then one day recently, she asked me to make a cake for her birthday.  She specifically requested the rose cake (that I love to make), which uses the rose cake method from I Am Baker.  And since she requested either purple or white, I decided to make it a purple ombre rose cake, similar to my purple ombre petal cake, which would start with purple at the bottom and gradually grow lighter until it became white on the top.

For the cake layers I made my favorite homemade dark chocolate cake.  I only used half the recipe, which filled two 6-inch cake pans.  Then I filled the layers with chocolate mousse (recipe from the Triple Chocolate Mousse Cake from America's Test Kitchen).

Then I whipped up a batch of cream cheese buttercream, and did a quick crumb coat over the entire cake.

And then came the fun part - the piping of the roses.  I divided the rest of the frosting into three parts - I left the first portion white, then the next portion I colored a light purple, and the third portion I colored a darker purple.

Then using a Wilton 1M tip and I Am Baker's rose cake method, I covered the top of my cake with white roses.

Next came the lighter purple roses, and finally the darker purple roses on the bottom.

Isn't it pretty? :)

Happy belated birthday, S!  Hope you enjoyed the cake!

purple ombre petal cake with chocolate butterflies for mother's day

My mom likes desserts that are not too sweet.  And, she loves lemon.  So for Mother's Day I decided to make her a lemon blueberry cake, with purple ombre petal frosting for a girly feminine touch.

Initially I was going to make a lemon cake with blueberries in the batter itself, but last minute I decided to just make it a lemon cake, filled with blueberry whipped cream.  I had been eyeing a recipe for "hot milk cake" in my copy of "Miette" by Meg Ray; it sounded interesting because it was the total opposite of any other cake recipes I had tried.  While usually I would combine the fat with the sugar and then add eggs, and then alternate a flour mixture with milk, this recipe called for beating eggs with sugar, then adding the flour, then melting butter with hot milk, which is then poured into the cake batter at the end.  Interesting!  I wanted to try it.  The only thing I changed was adding lemon zest to the batter, to give a nice lemony flavor to the cake.

The blueberry filling was fairly simple - I whipped heavy cream with a bit of confectioner's sugar and vanilla, and when it started forming stiff peaks I added a few tablespoons of pureed blueberries (blueberries that I had pulsed in the food processor), and then whipped it a bit more to incorporate.

For the frosting, I wanted a light frosting that wasn't too sweet, so I chose this swiss meringue cream cheese frosting at 6 Bittersweets - I've been wanting to try her recipe, and it sounded perfect with the lemon and blueberry combination.  But I must have done something wrong, because my frosting came out very loose.  I tried refrigerating it for a while and then rebeating, but this only lead to clumpy not-smooth frosting.  But I was running out of time, and besides it still tasted great, so I used it anyway.

I piped a border of frosting on the perimeter of my first layer of cake, so that the soft filling would not leak out.  Then I filled it with the blueberry whipped cream, and then topped it with my second layer of cake.  After a quick crumb coat of frosting, I began the fun part of creating the petal look of the frosting.  I found this great tutorial at Hungry Housewife, which shows you step by step how to create the petals.

I also made chocolate butterflies for the finishing touch!  I found a great tutorial here.  Initially I was going to make the butterflies purple, but since the top of my ombre cake was purple in the middle, I decided to just make them chocolate so that they would stand out.

When we cut into the cake, the inside looked so pretty with the purple and lemon yellow constrasting colors!  The cake was nice and lemony, but very very dense, and tasted almost like a lemon pound cake.  But the overall combination of lemon and blueberry flavors was nice.

Happy Mother's Day, Mommy!

hello kitty cake - pink ombre cake with whipped chocolate ganache and swiss meringue buttercream

It was my birthday this past week, and of course I had to make a cake for myself!  For my birthday last year, I made this coffee chiffon charlotte with homemade lady fingers, which was such a fun cake to make because: a) I had been wanting to try making a charlotte, and b) I had never made homemade lady fingers before.  But this year, I wanted to make a Hello Kitty cake - I'm sure you all know about my obsession with Hello Kitty by now!  So I made a cake covered with lots and lots of Hello Kitty!  Here is the sketch of what I had envisioned:

The idea actually came to me while I was piping roses onto this cake using I Am Baker's rose cake method - I had already made a few rose cakes before and suddenly thought to myself, I should cover a cake with Hello Kitty in the same way!  The only thing I couldn't decide was if I wanted the kitties to be staggered (like with the rose cakes), or in neat rows.  I decided to go with the neat rows.

I wanted the cake portion to be pink, so I made an ombre vanilla cake with varying shades of pink.

Once the cake was baked and cooled, I started on the filling.  I decided to do a decadent chocolate ganache, so I simply heated some heavy cream and then poured it over my dark chocolate, waited for the heat to melt it, and then stirred it up until the chocolate became smooth and glossy.  Once the ganache came to room temperature, I whipped it until it became fluffy and light, and then piped it in between my layers of pink cake.

As for the frosting, lately my go-to frosting has been a cream cheese cheese buttercream, but I have really been wanting to try making swiss meringue buttercream, which I tried out for the first time!

The frosting was definitely more complicated to make than a regular buttercream, because you have to heat egg whites and sugar to a certain temperature, and then whip them into a meringue.  Then you add butter a chunk at a time, until it comes together into a beautiful glossy buttercream.  But the extra effort was worth it, because it came out so silky and smooth, and wasn't too sweet at all.  I tasted the frosting right before I frosted the cake, and I was so excited because it tasted like whipped cream!  And it was so easy to work with because it was so light and fluffy and smooth.

So I did a quick crumb coat over the entire cake, and then a second coat as well.  

And then came the fun part - piping Hello Kitty!  I piped her the same way I do on my Hello Kitty cupcakes and mini cupcakes (my favorite thing to pipe on cupcakes), except this time I piped her on the sides of the cake.

First I piped the Hello Kitty heads all the way around the cake, so that they would be evenly distributed along the sides.  Next I piped the ears with a leaf tip.  At this point it didn't look like much, until I brought her to life by adding the eyes, whiskers, bow, and nose.

And the final Hello Kitty count - 56 of them!  And it was so much fun to do!

As for the top of the cake, my inspiration for the bow came from this Hello Kitty cake that I had made for my daughter (which I also later made again for a bridal shower).  My favorite part about the cake was the bow, so I decided to pipe that same bow onto this cake as well.

When the cake was finally done, I was seriously giddy.  It was my dream birthday cake.  A ton of Hello Kitty, her cute little bow on top, and served on top of my brand new Rosanna rococo noir cake stand!  Wheeeee!

Later on when we ate the cake, the frosting was still silky but didn't have the same 'whipped cream' taste.  Perhaps because it had hardened in the fridge, or because smoothing it on the cake made it more compact, but it had a much more buttery taste than when it was freshly whipped.

Also I missed that cream cheese 'tang' from my favorite cream cheese buttercream, so I've been eyeing this swiss meringue cream cheese frosting at 6 Bittersweets to try out next time!

I was so excited about this cake that I posted it on Instagram as well!

In the end, I just couldn't bear to eat the Hello Kittys.  So I saved them for my kids to eat - they had no problems digging right in!

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