hello kitty pastel pom pom birthday cake and cupcakes

My sweet Melodie turned four this past December! Where does the time go?!?

Last year, she requested a purple Hello Kitty cake, which I made to for us to celebrate with at home, and then I made these Hello Kitty mini cupcakes for her party at preschool. But this year, she requested a "rainbow Hello Kitty cake", so I decided to make her a pastel rainbow pom pom cake!

For the cake layers, I made a white layer and a pink layer, and sliced each in half horizontally. Then I filled each layer with freshly whipped cream.

After a quick crumb coat with whipped cream, I let the cake set in the fridge for about 30 minutes.

In the meantime, I colored portions of the whipped cream with pastel colors - pink, lavender, mint green, and sky blue - all using Americolor gel paste food coloring. 

I also colored very small portions with black, red, and yellow for the eyes, bow, and nose. After quickly piping a Hello Kitty face on the top of the cake (see here and here for more examples on how I do this), I started piping the pom-poms around it, by piping stars with a Wilton #18 tip.

Then I filled the sides with piped stars as well, varying the colors randomly.

I loved the finished cake! And so did Melodie!

As for her class party, I made matching cupcakes! Pink on the inside, pastel pom-poms on the outside, with piped Hello Kitty faces on top. (see here, here, here, here, and here for more example of how I pipe mini Hello Kitty faces!)

Happy Birthday to my little Melodie!

banana cupcakes with cream cheese frosting and fruit leather flower pom poms

By the time I got to the sign-up sheet for the Teacher Appreciation Week luncheon at my son's preschool, there was nothing left to sign up for.  Literally nothing - all the slots were full.  But I wanted to make something to bring anyway, and since we had an abundance of overripe bananas at home, I decided to make banana cupcakes.

At first I was just going to top the cupcakes with a simple cream cheese frosting, but then a few days before the luncheon I saw this post at Best Friends for Frosting, which linked to this tutorial at Wedding Chicks - edible DIY flower pom poms made out of fruit leather!  Genius!

Making the pom poms was fairly simple.  The hardest part was getting the petals to stay put.  But the tutorial said to use toothpicks to help hold the petals in place while they dried, and that seemed to help.  But even though I let them dry overnight, they were still a bit soft and floppy the next morning.

The night before the luncheon, I made my banana cupcakes using my mom's banana bread recipe (stay tuned for a post on her banana bread later).  One batch of batter that would normally fill one 9-inch loaf pan ended up making 16 cupcakes.

I thought perhaps the cupcakes might come out more like muffins, since the recipe was meant for banana bread, but I sampled one after they were baked, and it was actually the perfect texture!

Next I whipped up a batch of cream cheese frosting and used a 1M tip to pipe large roses on top of the cupcakes.  And then I topped them with my pom poms.

I had only made 6 of the fruit leather pom poms (they were more time-consuming to make than I had anticipated!), so I topped the remaining cupcakes with sugar pearls and non-pareils.

I hope all the teachers enjoyed the cupcakes!  Happy Teacher Appreciation Week!