teapot tea party cookies with brush embroidery flowers

 

Sometime last year, my friend Monica asked me to make teapot cookie favors for her daughter's afternoon tea themed birthday party, and after collaborating back and forth over text, we decided to go with pink and blue teapot cookies with brush embroidery flowers!

I started by making my favorite sugar cookies (recipe in my book, The Hello Kitty Baking Book!) and cutting out the cookies with a teapot cookie cutter. After baking them and letting them cool, I whipped up a batch of royal icing (recipe also in my book!). Using gel-based food coloring, I tinted a portion of the icing pink (using Americolor soft pink), another portion blue (using Americolor sky blue), and left the last portion white. Then with stiff pink icing in a disposable piping bag and a small round tip, I outlined half of the cookies in pink ...

... and then filled them in with runny pink icing.

Then I did the same with the other half of the cookies except with blue icing. Once the icing had dried for several hours, I was ready to pipe on the details, including the brush embroidery. This is a technique where you pipe an outline with stiff icing, and then use a (slightly damp) food-safe brush to drag the edges of the outline towards the center, giving a cool painted effect.

Here's how it looked with just the outline of the flower and accompanying leaf:

And here's how it looked after I used a brush to drag the edges towards the center. I also added a few dots of stiff white icing in the center of each flower.

After letting the brush embroidery and details dry, they were done!

Enjoy!

circus carnival cake with handmade fondant lion topper

Sometime last year, I received a request for a circus carnival cake for a baby's first birthday. Doan, the baby's mother wanted a lion topper on the cake, and a colorful circus themed border on the cake. So based on the sample pictures that she had sent me, I came up with this cake!

For the lion topper, I decided to do something in the same style as the giraffe topper that I had made for this giraffe baby shower cake. So first I tinted my fondant using golden yellow gel-based food coloring, and then shaped out the various lion parts that I would be needing - a torso, back legs, front legs, and a head.

Then I added ears, a white snout, used a black edible food marker to add eyes and a nose, and then used a flower shaped cookie cutter to make the lion's mane out of orangey-brown tinted fondant.

After attaching all the parts (with a toothpick in the center of the lion to hold the head in place), I added a cute little tail.

And a cute little fondant lion was born!

For the cake, I baked 1.5 batches of vanilla cake (recipe in my book!) into two 10-inch round cake pans, and  I sliced each cake layer in half horizontally to give me four cake layers. Then I filled each cake layer with freshly whipped cream and fresh strawberries.

After all the layers were assembled, I let the cake chill in the fridge while I whipped up two batches of cream cheese buttercream. I set a bit of the frosting aside (to be tinted various colors) and then tinted the majority of the frosting with Americolor royal blue. Then I used the blue frosting to do a crumb coat and a second coat over the tops and sides of the cakes, smoothing it out each time with an offset spatula (and chilling in between coats).

Then it was time to decorate! For the colorful beaded border I used a Wilton #12 tip, which I also used to pipe large polka dots all over the sides of the cake (and later smoothed them out with an offset spatula). The final touch was to add the birthday boy's name in big red letters using a Wilton #3 tip.

And then it was time to add the fondant lion, which I attached using a bit of frosting on the bottom of the fondant figure.

Happy happy birthday, Roland! Hope you enjoyed your cake! :)

seashell, starfish, and seahorse cookies

Last September, my cousin's husband's cousin (cousin-in-law?) Su asked me to make sea-themed cookies for her sister's baby shower. The invitations had a pretty sea coral theme, so we decided to go with seashells, seahorses, and starfish in turquoise and coral colors.

I baked up a few batches of my favorite sugar cookie dough (recipe in my book, The Hello Kitty Baking Book!), and used various cookie cutters that I had bought on Amazon! (You can find them here for the star fish, here for the sea shell, and here for the sea horse!)

For the seashells, I used stiff white royal icing (recipe also in my book!) to outline the shells, and once they were dry I filled them in with runny white icing.

Then once that had dried for several hours, I went back with stiff white icing and a small round tip to pipe the shell details.

I also prepared piping bags of turquoise and coral colored icing. For the turquoise I used Americolor sky blue, and for the coral I used two parts soft pink, one part lemon yellow, and one part red.

Next came the starfish. I again outlined each one, this time with stiff turquoise icing, and then filled them in with runny turquoise icing.

Once dry, I added dot details to each starfish, using stiff turquoise icing.

I also made some of them in coral.

And it was pretty much the same process for the seahorses as well - outline with stiff icing, fill with runny icing, let dry, and then use stiff icing to add the details.

I love how they turned out, and I especially love this color combination!

Happy baby shower, Jueun! 

snowflake cutout apple pie for christmas

In addition to the cookie christmas tree and reindeer cookies that I made this past Christmas, I also made this apple pie for dessert! It's been a recent tradition of mine to make apple pie for Christmas, including this Christmas wreath apple pie, or this Christmas Tree apple pie (there's even a Hello Kitty apple pie in my book, The Hello Kitty Baking Book!), so this year I decided to do snowflake cutouts for my pie!

I started with a batch of my favorite pie crust (recipe in my book!), divided it in half, and rolled out my bottom crust to fit into the bottom of my 9-inch pie dish. Then I poured in my apple filling (apples, sugar, flour, cinnamon, cloves, salt, and a pinch of salt), and then used a snowflake cookie cutter to make a snowflake decorated top crust!

After a quick egg wash and a sprinkling with sanding sugar, I popped it into a 415F oven for 15 minutes, and then lowered it to 350F for 45-50 minutes, until the crust had become golden brown.

I'm already thinking of more shapes to make for future Christmases to come! 

Enjoy!

rainbow jello for chinese new year

Almost every year, I make rainbow jello for Chinese New Year. It's so pretty, and festive, and both kids and adults love it! It's a super versatile jello to make and you can make it with any colors you like - I've made it for Valentine's Day, St. Patrick's Day, and Christmas to name a few occasions. I've even made it in egg-shaped jello molds for Easter, or Hello Kitty shaped molds for my book!

For the colored layers, you just need to chose four different colors/flavors of Jello for the different colored layers. And the white layers are made of clear gelatin mixed with sweetened condensed milk for a creamy milky layer in between the fruity layers.

While the recipe itself is super easy, it does take a bit of time to make, because each layer takes at least 30 minutes in the fridge to set before adding the next layer. But it's a fun dessert to make, say on a rainy day, or on a weekend at home, or with your kids!

Plus its a light and not-too-sweet dessert for any meal. Enjoy! And Happy Chinese New Year!

rudolph the reindeer cookies

For my daughter's class Christmas party last month, I decided to make these cute reindeer cookies, based on a design I had seen at Bubble and Sweet. I loved the color of the turquoise and white reindeer with the red nose accent, but I decided to do the reverse and have a snowy white reindeer with turquoise spots and red nose instead. Luckily, I had recently been given a beautiful reindeer cookie cutter from Cookie Cutter Kingdom, so I was all set! (Thanks Cookie Cutter Kingdom!)

I started with my favorite sugar cookie dough (recipe in my book, The Hello Kitty Baking Book), which I rolled out to 1/8 inch thick, cut out shapes, and then baked at 350F for 10-12 minutes until the edges of the cookies had turned golden.

Then I whipped up a batch of my favorite royal icing (recipe also in my book!), used white stiff icing to outline my reindeer cookies, and then used white runny icing to fill them in. (The stiff icing outline acts as a border, so that the runny icing doesn't drip off the edges of your cookie!) For the turquoise spots on the reindeer's back, I mixed a bit of royal blue gel-based food coloring into stiff icing, and piped little dots onto the reindeers while the white icing was still wet. Then I let the cookie dry for several hours (or overnight).

Once the icing was dry, I piped little Rudolph noses with stiff red icing and a small round tip.

I just love the color combination of white, turquoise, and red!

Also, since we were hosting Christmas this year, I had an idea to have a little reindeer cookie on each place setting. So I left several cookies completely white with a red nose, and then painted the antlers gold inspired by these gilded reindeer cookies from Sweetapolita! To make the gold "paint", I used edible gold dust mixed with clear vanilla extract, similar to how I painted the gold star cookie that topped my Christmas tree cookie tower in my previous post. 

And here's how they looked on each place setting.

The little gilded reindeers went perfectly with my bay leaf garland, white candles, and gold flatware!

Hope you and your family had a very Merry Christmas!