mickey mouse birthday cake with handmade fondant mickey hat

My good friend Helen has an adorable daughter named Marni, who discovered Disneyland and Mickey Mouse a few months before her 2nd birthday. She loved it so much that Helen asked me to make a Mickey Mouse cake for the birthday party! We collaborated on ideas for a few weeks, before deciding to do two cakes - one for the kids, and one for the adults - and this is what we decided on for the kids cake! An 8-inch strawberries and cream cake, topped with a handmade fondant Mickey Mouse hat!

A few weeks before the party, I got started on the fondant hat, since I knew it would need time to dry completely. So I bought some black fondant (to save myself the time and colored hands it would take to color my own fondant), and got to work!

I started by rolling out the black fondant pretty thin, and then used an upside-down bowl to form the shape of my Mickey hat.

Then I used a pizza cutter and a paring knife to trim off the excess fondant.

Next I rolled out more fondant and used a round cookie cutter to cut out circle shapes for the ears. These would fit into little slits that I cut into my hat once everything was dry. (I also used black royal icing to "glue" the ears into the slits in the hat).



For the lettering on the hat, I used white fondant which I colored with golden yellow, and rolled it out into a long thin rope. Then I formed that into my cursive lettering and let it dry for several days before attaching it to my hat with just a bit of water.

Then the evening before the party, I started on on the cake. I baked two 8-inch vanilla cakes (recipe in my book, The Hello Kitty Baking Book!), which cooled and then cut into half horizontally, giving me four cake layers. Then I filled each layer with freshly whipped cream and fresh sliced strawberries.

Once the cake was assembled, I whipped up a batch of cream cheese buttercream, which I tinted bright red before covering the top and sides of the cake with it (first a crumb coat, then a 30-minute chill in the fridge, and then a final smooth coat of frosting).

The next morning, the cake was ready to be decorated!

I added two white fondant circles for Mickey's buttons ...

.. and then came the final touch, my handmade fondant Mickey hat!

I couldn't wait for Marni and Helen to see it!!!

In addition to the cake, I also made homemade oreos (based on Thomas Keller's TKOs), as well as the cake for the adults (stay tuned for my next post!)

The party was at a beautiful park with a playground, and featured dim sum, pizza, a one-man bubble show, as well as a live Mickey Mouse who came and played and danced with the kids! Soooo much fun!!!

Happy Birthday, Marni!!!

cat cookies and onesie cookies

In addition to the yellow ruffle cake that I made for my friend Bernice's sister's baby shower, I also made cat and onesie cookies as favors! I have made the onesie cookies several times before, but the cat cookies are special. They are based on a logo designed by my dear friends Diana and Gavin (they are the creators of Bumble Ink!). They designed the logo when Diana was she hosting a baby shower for her sister Leona (who loves cats), and I had made cat cookies to look like the cat logo on the invitations. Bernice's sister is apparently a cat person as well, and Bernice thought the cat design would be perfect for her sister!

I started by making my favorite sugar cookie dough, as well as a batch of royal icing (recipes in my book, The Hello Kitty Baking Book!). Once cut out and baked, I outlined each cookie with stiff gray royal icing, and then filled them in with runny gray icing. Then I let them dry for several hours before using stiff white icing to pipe on the details for the face, ears. Finally an outline with stiff gray icing around each cookie completed the look. (For more details on the cat cookie process, see this link on the cookies that I had made for Diana.)

I also made onesie cookies with a yellow border, to match the yellow and gray theme of the baby shower.

The process is generally the same - after baking and cooling my cookie, I outlined each one with stiff white icing, then filled them in with runny white icing. After letting them dry for several hours, I used stiff yellow icing to pipe on the heart and button details, as well as the final outline around each cookie. (If you want to see more details on how I make the onesie cookies, you can see my previous posts here.)

I loved the color combo of the gray and the yellow, perfect for a baby shower!

Enjoy!

yellow ruffle lemon cake filled with lemon whipped cream and fresh blueberries

Speaking of reconnecting with high school friends (which I mentioned in my last post), sometime last summer I also made this yellow ruffle cake for my friend Bernice from high school, who was hosting a baby shower for her sister Tiffany! She wanted to emulate a blueberry cheesecake that was a favorite of her sister's, so we decided on a lemon cake with blueberry whipped cream, similar to this cake. (Although now that I look at the pictures, I totally forgot to make a blueberry whipped cream, and ended up making a whipped cream with fresh blueberries instead! OOPS! I'm so sorry, Bernice!)

Anyway, for the lemon cake I used the vanilla cake recipe in my book, The Hello Kitty Baking Book, and added grated lemon zest to the batter (instead of the extracts). I baked them into two 8-inch cake pans, let them cool, and then cut them in half horizontally (giving me 4 cake layers). Then I filled each layer with fresh whipped cream and fresh blueberries.

For the frosting, Bernice wanted a ruffle cake similar to this one, except we decided to go with buttercream instead of whipped cream since it was going to be a hot day! Since I knew the cake would be covered with ruffles, I only covered the cake with a quick crumb coat of yellow buttercream (recipe also in my book!).

Then I used a disposable pastry bag fitted with a petal tip to pipe the ruffles, starting in the middle of the cake and piping continuous rings towards the outer edge of the cake. (A nice revolving cake stand works great for this! Or, you could use a lazy susan.)

Then I continued piping all the way down the sides of the cake.

Here's a view from the top, isn't it pretty?



I do think that this technique with buttercream gives a slightly different look than when done with whipped cream though, as buttercream gives slightly smoother ruffles while whipped cream gives more textured ruffles. But both effects are still very pretty.

Anyway hopefully the blueberry whipped cream debacle turned out okay. (Sorry again, Bernice!)

Happy baby shower, Tiffany!

baseball cookies for a little slugger baby shower

It's amazing to me that because of the blog, I have reconnected with several friends from high school. I mean, how cool is that?! So several month ago, another friend from high school contacted me about doing baseball cookies for a baby shower she was hosting. I had done baseball cookies before, but this time she also wanted baseball bat cookies. So thanks to my handy husband who is an awesome cookie cutter maker, he made me another custom copper cutter!

After making my favorite sugar cookie dough (recipe in my book, The Hello Kitty Baking Book!), I rolled the dough out to about 1/8" thick, used my shiny new baseball bat cutters to cut out shapes, baked them at 350F until golden brown, and then let them cool. (I did have one tray of cookies that spent a little too much time in the oven though, oops!)

Anyway, for the rest of the cookies, once cooled I used stiff brown royal icing (recipe also in my book!) to outline my bats, and then runny brown icing to fill them in.

The final touch was adding blue and red "tape" to the bats, and little lines to suggest the wood pattern in the bats.

Aren't they cute?!

For the baseball cookies, you can see more in this post of how I made them, but I basically followed the same steps - outline with stiff icing, fill with runny icing, and then add final touches with stiff icing.

I also made little baseball jersey cookies, using a onesie cookie cutter, and decorated them with piped stripes to give them a jersey look.

I think these would be great for a birthday party or a little league party as well!

Happy baby shower!!!

hello kitty giant macaron cake (cake that looks like a hello kitty macaron)

Since the first time I created my Hello Kitty macarons five years ago, I have seen them pop up all over the place, on the internet, and even in bakeries and shops. They were one of my favorite things to make, have been requested at bridal showers, and I have even made them for a wedding dessert table! It is one of my most popular blog posts, and so I had to include the recipe in my book, The Hello Kitty Baking Book!

Last year for my birthday, I made a cake decorated with (nut free) Hello Kitty macarons, and a few months later when I was brainstorming ideas for a Mother's Day cake, my husband suggested a different type of Hello Kitty macaron cake - one that actually looks like a Hello Kitty macaron! Genius!

Since I have an obsessive love for all coffee flavored desserts, I decided to make it a coffee chiffon cake. I baked up three 8-inch coffee chiffon layers, let them cool, and then used a Hello Kitty template (the same Hello Kitty pan sushi mold used for my Hello Kitty tiramisu cake) to cut each cake layer into a Hello Kitty shape. Then I topped each cake with a layer of coffee whipped cream ...

... and a pile of smashed oreo cookies (since I love coffee oreo ice cream SO much!).

Then I added more coffee whipped cream and smoothed the whole thing out with an offset spatula.

Next came another layer of cake, more coffee whipped cream, and more oreos.

After the final layer of cake, I covered the whole thing with coffee whipped cream, and smoothed it out as best as I could with an offset spatula.

Then I went to work making it look like a macaron! I used a large round tip to pipe a ring of pink around the sides of the cake (meant to look like the macaron filling layer), and then used an offset spatula to smooth it out. Then I used a small round tip to pipe little "dots and bubbles", meant to look like the ruffly sides of the macaron shells. 

I finished it by piping black eyes and whiskers, and a yellow nose. For the bow I of course had to pipe hearts to make up the bow, since my Hello Kitty macarons have heart sprinkles for the bow.

And there it is! A cake that looks like a giant Hello Kitty macaron!

Happy Mother's Day!

winter snowflake hello kitty birthday cupcakes

For my daughter's 6th birthday a few months ago, we went with a winter/snowflake theme, since her birthday is in December, plus she's still really into Frozen right now! We had a small gathering to celebrate, to which she invited a handful of her best friends, and I ended up making her a Tokidoki Yuki Unicorno winter birthday cake, as well as snowflake cookies for the favors. So to stick with the theme, for her Kindergarten class celebration at school, I decided to make Hello Kitty snowflake cupcakes!

I started with a moist chocolate cupcake (recipe in my book, The Hello Kitty Baking Book), and topped it with a cream cheese frosting (recipe also in my book!), which I tinted blue and then used a basketweave tip to pipe my basketweave design (there is also a basketweave tutorial also in my book, but you can also find other basketweave examples throughout the blog).

Then I used white frosting to pipe Hello Kitty on top of each cupcake, along with black eyes and whiskers, a yellow nose, and for each bow I used two heart-shaped confetti sprinkles. (For more examples, see links here, here, here, and here. And this link for the first and original cupcakes that I made!)

And for the final touch I added a few snowflake sprinkles! (I got mine at Target, but you can also find them here).

The cupcakes turned out moist, minty and chocolately, and not too sweet!

One of the kids even thought it was the sprinkles that tasted minty :)

Miss Melodie loved her cupcakes, and I loved watching her eat them with her classmates!

Enjoy!