dump truck cookies

My cousin-in-law Kristen has a son named Caleb who absolutely loves dump trucks! So for his second birthday this year, she asked me to make dump truck cookies for him. And since I didn't have a dump truck cookie cutter on hand, I asked hubby to make me another custom copper cutter!

For both the cookie dough and royal icing, I used the recipes in my book, The Hello Kitty Baking Book. Once the cookie were baked and cooled, I used stiff royal icing to outline each one - black for the tires and window, yellow for the cab, blue for the rest of the truck, and brown for the dirt.

After the outlines had dried, I went back and filled them in with their respective colors.

And after letting that dry for several hours, I went back with more blue stiff icing and re-outlined the blue part of the dump truck, just to clean it up and make it pop.

Aren't they cute?

Happy Birthday, Caleb! Hope you enjoyed your dump truck cookies!

rainbow sprinkle first birthday smash cake

In addition to the Princess Leia cookies that I made for my best friend Sue (who was having a Star Wars themed first birthday party for her daughter Leia), I also made a rainbow sprinkle smash cake for the birthday girl!

Since this would be the first time Leia would be trying cake, we didn't want to go with anything too overpowering, so we decided to go with a vanilla cake, filled with fresh strawberries and whipped cream. So I baked up two 6-inch vanilla cake layers (half of the recipe of the vanilla cake from my boo, The Hello Kitty Baking Book), let the cakes cool, and sliced each one into half horizontally, giving me four cake layers. Then I filled each layer with freshly whipped cream and chopped strawberries (normally I slice the strawberries, but in this case I wanted them in little pieces for baby Leia).

Then I whipped up a batch of cream cheese buttercream, and covered the tops and sides of the cake with it (crumb coat, then chilled for 30 minutes before applying the final coat).

The final touch was adding rainbow sprinkles!

In order to let the number 1 show up in white frosting through the sprinkles, I drew a big "1" on a piece of cardstock, then placed it on the cake before adding the sprinkles.

Here's a picture of the birthday girl enjoying her first cake ever!

Happy Birthday, Leia!!! Hugs and kisses from Auntie Michele! :)

princess leia cookies for a star wars birthday party

My best friend Sue named her daughter Leia, so of course for Leia's first birthday they had to throw a Star Wars themed party! To go with the theme, I made Princess Leia cookies for the favors. But instead of the heart sprinkle mouth from my previous attempt at Princess Leia cookies, we decided that a cute little smile would be more appropriate for baby Leia :)

Since I was making about 100 cookies, I made four batches of my favorite sugar cookie recipe (which is in my book, The Hello Kitty Baking Book!). I rolled out my dough and used a monkey cookie cutter to cut out shapes, which works perfectly for a Princess Leia shape!

After baking and cooling the cookies, I started on the royal icing (recipe also in my book!). I used brown stiff icing and a small round tip to pipe the outline of Princess Leia's hair, and then filled it in with brown runny icing.

For the face, I used ivory food coloring to tint my icing a flesh tone, and then used the ivory stiff icing to outline the face, and ivory runny icing to fill it in.

Once the cookies had dried for several hours, I used brown stiff icing to pipe the outline of the hair, as well as swirls for Princess Leia's hair buns.

Finally I used black stiff icing to add the eyes and cute little smile.

Aren't they cute? :)

Once the cookies had completely dried, I wrapped them individually in cellophane favor bags, and tied them closed with raffia.

Happy Birthday, little Leia! Hope you had fun at your party!

Stay tuned to see the smash cake that I made her as well!

hello kitty oreos (hello kitty TKOs)

If you've read my blog before, you'll know that I often turn my desserts into Hello Kitty desserts on a whim. As was the case when I recently made homemade oreos using Thomas Keller's recipe from the Bouchon Bakery book. (His cookies are called "TKOs" ... Thomas Keller Oreos. Cute huh?)

I've had my Hello Kitty cookie cutter for years, and it's come in handy for so many things (Hello Kitty cookies, Hello Kitty tarts, Hello Kitty tarlets, Hello Kitty Pumpkin Pie, and Hello Kitty tortilla chips, to name a few!) And I love that it comes with a little stamper as well, so that you can stamp Hello Kitty's features right into the cookie before baking!

As mentioned in my previous post, these babies are filled with a delicious vanilla buttercream, which turned out to be the prefect sweet compliment to the extra dark and chocolaty (and slightly salty) cookies.

So cute and so delicious!!!

homemade oreos (homemade TKOs)

A few years ago, I tried making homemade oreos but I wasn't happy with them. The cookie was too crumbly, and the filling was too soft. Later on, I tasted the TKOs (Thomas Keller Oreos) at Bouchon Bakery. Delicious! I eventually bought myself a copy of the Bouchon Bakery book, and the homemade oreo recipe was the first thing I tried!

After rolling out the (very chocolaty) dough between two sheets of parchment paper, I cut out my scalloped circles with a 3-inch decorative cookie cutter.

And then baked them for about 16 minutes.

For the filling, I followed the white chocolate filling recipe in the book, but it didn't work for me. It came out very, very runny. So instead I whipped up a vanilla buttercream and used that instead.

The book tells you to pipe the filling in teardrop shapes, to accent the scalloped edges of the cookie. So pretty!

I have to admin, these were much much better than my first attempt at homemade oreos years ago. This cookie was more chocolately, with a slightly salty bite, and the texture was perfect to hold in the delicious filling. So addictive!!!

coffee and cream ruffle cake

For my best friend Sue's birthday this past March, I wanted to make her a cake flavor that she hadn't tried yet. In the past, I've made her Hello Kitty ice cream cake, Boston cream pie cake, triple chocolate mousse cake, Hello Kitty chocolate mousse cake, and a piped petals chocolate mousse layer cake (for her baby shower). This time I decided to go with something lighter, so I went with a light and fluffy coffee chiffon cake!

After baking four 6-inch layers of coffee chiffon cake, I filled it with freshly whipped cream which I flavored with a paste made of espresso powder and hot water. Then also covered the tops and sides of my cake, and smoothed it out with an offset spatula.

For the decoration, I wanted something girly and frilly, so I chose to pipe continuous swirls of ruffles, as I did with my recent green tea ruffle cake and pink velvet ruffle cake.

I think this is definitely my current favorite way to decorate a cake!

The cake ended up being soft and moist, and reminded both of us of a mocha cake that my mom used to buy for me every year on my birthday, ever since junior high. (Too bad that bakery is no longer around, or else I would gladly continue that tradition!)

To one of the most fun and thoughtful people that I know, Happy Birthday, Sue!

year of the goat (or ram) cookies

Along with these decorated egg cookies for my friend Selena's red egg and ginger party for her baby, I also made these Goat cookies, since it is the Year of the Goat! I again used my favorite sugar cookie and royal icing recipes, which can be found in my book, The Hello Kitty Baking Book, and for the cookie cutter I had my husband create me another custom copper cutter! He's so handy :)

Selena and I had decided on purple and red for the color of the cookies, since those are "lucky" colors for the Year of the Goat. Once the cookies had baked and cooled, I used stiff purple icing to pipe an outline of the goat, and then filled it in with runny purple icing.

Once that had dried for several hours, I used stiff red icing to pipe the Chinese character for "goat".

I thought they looked pretty cute as-is, but I decided to also add eyes with stiff black icing, which I regretted because afterwards I thought they looked like little dinosaurs instead of goats!

Oh well, they still looked cute :)

Happy one month, little Dominic!