red and white lovebird cookies

Just last week, a friend of a friend asked me to make cookies for her sister's wedding shower dinner. She wanted favors for the guests to take home with him, and after seeing the lovebird cookies that I made for my brother's wedding a couple of years ago, and she requested them in red and white.

For the cookies, I used my favorite sugar cookie recipe (you can find the recipe in my book, The Hello Kitty Baking Book!), rolled it out to about 1/8 inch thick and cut out shapes with a heart-shaped cookie cutter (the largest one from this nested set of heart cookie cutters). Then I baked them at 350F for 10-12 minutes until they were golden around the edges.

Once all of the cookies were baked and cooled, I whipped up a batch of royal icing (recipe also in my book!), and used stiff icing to outline half of the heart, before filling it in with runny icing.

Next I tinted about a third of the icing super red (that's the actual name of the color!), and used stiff red icing to outline the other half of the cookie, before filling it in with red runny icing.

After letting the icing dry for several hours (I usually let them dry overnight), I was ready to add the lovebird details! I started by piping a brown branch for the lovebirds to sit on (done with medium running icing), and once that was dry I piped golden yellow beaks and little bird feet on the branch.

Then I used black stiff icing to pipe the little eyes, using the smallest piping tip I had.

I also added little wing details. And then they were done!

Aren't they cute?

Do you like them better in red and white, or the original blue and white?

Congratulations to the bride and groom!

dark chocolate tartlets with pretzel crust and rose peppercorn sea salt

A few weeks ago, we invited our neighbors over for a casual last-minute BBQ, and as we were prepping the food I realized that we didn't have anything for dessert! I instantly thought about using the adorable baking and dessert salts that Expertly Chosen had sent me a couple of months ago! I thought a simple and quick dark chocolate tart would be the perfect thing to use them on, and since I love dark chocolate-covered pretzels (especially the ones at Trader Joe's!), I decided to make a simple pretzel crust to go with it.

With a quick online search, I found this pretzel crust recipe from Betty Crocker, which sounded perfect! So I ground up the pretzels in my food processor with sugar, and then poured in melted butter to bring it together. (Although in the future, I would probably add a little bit more butter to hold it together better).

Then I scooped the pretzel mixture into mini tart tins, and pressed it into the bottom and sides of the tins. (I used 4-inch tart tins, and was able to get 9 mini tart crusts out of the pretzel mixture). I baked them at 350F for about 10 minutes just to set them a bit, and then set them aside to cool.

For the chocolate ganache filling, I used this recipe from Sweetapolita (just the ganache part), except I had to double the recipe to be able to fill all 9 tarts. Then I sprinkled on my flavored salts.

For the BBQ, I had sprinkled on the "espresso salt", which went nicely with the dark chocolate. But the next day, I had two leftover tarts that I hadn't added the baking salt to yet, and I thought I would try another flavor. I ended up choosing the "rose peppercorn salt", mainly because I thought the dried rose petals were so pretty (and also how cute would these rose petal tarts be for Valentine's Day?)!



The rose peppercorn salt gave the tarts a delicately flowery yet peppery flavor, which also went quite well with the dark chocolate. And honestly, I think every one of the salts would have paired well!

With this specific set, the options include:

Vanilla Cardamom Salt
Espresso Salt
Rose Peppercorn Salt
Hibiscus Salt
Orange Ginger Salt
Vanilla Lavendar Salt

Thanks again for the baking and dessert salts, Expertly Chosen! I can't wait to try them all!

heart cookie pops on a stick

While I was making these conversation heart cookies for Valentine's Day this year, I thought it would also be fun to turn a few of the heart cookies into cookie pops! Just 'cause it's so fun eating snacks on sticks, right?

So using the same batch of sugar cookie dough (recipe in my book, The Hello Kitty Baking Book!), I cut out my hearts, and then placed them on top of lollipop sticks that I laid out on my baking sheet, gently pressing the dough to surround the stick. Then I baked them at 350F for 10-12 minutes until just golden.

You could kind of see indents in the baked cookies, from where I was pressing the dough, but I knew it would be fine since I was going to decorate them with royal icing.

Here you can see that the lollipop stick wasn't completely surrounded by cookie dough, but even so it still stayed and held together nicely.

To decorate, I started by piping a heart outline using red stiff icing in a piping bag fitted with a Wilton #2 tip.

Then I filled in the hearts with red runny icing.

After letting them dry overnight, they were done!

Since my youngest son Micah is a Valentine's baby and his second birthday was coming up (he was born the day after Valentine's Day), I decided to turn one of the cookies into a cake topper for his birthday cake, and piped a simple "2" onto one heart cookie.

I can't wait to do this with other cookie shapes as well!

*** Update: click here to see the rainbow fruits birthday cake that I ended up using this cookie topper for!

valentine's conversation heart cookies

Well here it is, at the end of April, and I'm only now getting around to posting the cookies that I made for Valentine's Day! Better late than never, right? ;)

So for Melodie's class Valentine's party this year, one available item on the sign-up sheet immediately caught my eye ... COOKIES. As soon as I saw it, I knew I had to make these adorable conversation heart cookies that I had recently seen on Martha Stewart's site!

I ended up using my own trustworthy sugar cookie and royal icing recipes from my book, The Hello Kitty Baking Book, but you could of course go with Martha's recipe as well.

After I had baked and cooled my cookies, I outlined them with stiff icing, and then filled them in with runny icing.

I chose to stick to the cookie colors white, pink, pastel green, and yellow. Once I had let them dry overnight, instead of using a stamp like Martha does, I used red stiff icing (with the smallest tip, a Wilton #1 tip) to pipe cute messages on the cookies.

And for the final touch, I used stiff icing to pipe a final outline around each heart cookie.

The color combination is just too cute!

Happy belated Valentine's Day! :)

hello kitty layer jello

If you've read my blog before, you'll probably already know that I have a thing for making rainbow jello. I make it for Valentine's Day, for Chinese New Years, I've even made a green and white version for St. Patrick's Day and an egg-shaped version for Easter! So while I was writing my new book (it comes out next week!!!), I wanted to include a Hello Kitty version, made in cute silicone molds!

You can find the recipe in my new book, The Hello Kitty Baking Book, but it's basically a finger jello made with different flavors of jello, clear gelatine, and a yummy creamy white layer in between the colored layers.

To get the beautiful layers, it does take quite some time (especially if you only have one silicone mold), but the results are striking!

You could do any flavor/color combination you like, and if you can't find the silicone molds you could always make it in a 9x13 pan and use cookie cutters to cut out the shapes.

To get the recipe and see brand new photos, you can order my book here!