A Very Hello Kitty 5th Birthday

Next week marks my niece's birthday, I can't believe she's five already! I can still remember getting the phone call in the middle of the night to announce her birth, I was in Southampton at uni at the time and we all got up for an hour too excited to see oo-ing and ahh-ing over the photos they'd just sent over on our phones.

I love being an aunty, she's so clever (I know I'm biased - but she is!) and she's so funny as well. We loving baking together, it's a good thing the girl likes cake with me around! Cake pops don't last long around her that's for sure. Unfortunately we won't be able to go to her party this weekend as we're away on holiday, but I did manage to make her a cake and cake pops for it.

Last year she was all about Snow White, this year however she's been sent back to the cottage with the dwarves - sorry Snow White, there's a new girl in town.....Hello Kitty! So there was no question really about what her cake should be. I always like to go one better though - so she got some cake pops as well :), I have actually made these cake pops before but she didn't see them so they definitely needed to make a reappearance.

For the cake I made a big vanilla cake iced with pink (of course) vanilla buttercream. The fondant was coloured with Claret Sugarflair colouring paste and Hello Kitty herself was made from a stencil, I love my stencils. I printed out a few sheets of an outline drawing of her and cut out all of the pieces I wanted to make. I layered up the colours keeping her whole white body as a base and laying on the red top, flower and bow etc. I'm actually really happy with how she turned out...I do tend to end up as the 'angry baker' as people call me when I'm decorating - I was a little stressed at times... but overall I'm really happy with her.

For her name, top and bow I used Christmas Red colouring paste which just felt wrong in July and the flowers, butterflies and other top I used lilac concentrate colouring, varying strengths which went really nice with the reds and pinks.

Now moving onto the cake pops, using vanilla cake I crumbled it all up and mixed it with vanilla buttercream and rolled it into little Hello Kitty head shapes. After leaving them to cool I dipped them in white chocolate and then piped on the face details and bow. They're so easy to make and look brilliant...what's more they taste epic!

I can't wait to see photos of my niece blowing out her candles and enjoying her party and cake... have a happy birthday Sophie Chops!! Pin It Now!

Tom Hardy Heartthrob Giant Cupcake

This week was one of my best friends' birthdays, the big 21! I've known for a long time what cake to make her, it really was a no-brainer.

To say she likes Tom Hardy (from This Means War, Inception, RocknRolla) would be a serious understatement. I just had to get him on the cake, after using ricepaper for the One Direction cake I did recently I thought this would be the perfect way, and then she gets to eat him, perfect!

Finding a nice image I used Photoshop to rub out one of his tattoos and replace it with her name in a fancy script, I have to say it does actually look realistic.

The cake itself is vanilla with chocolate buttercream. The sponge is marbled with pink too for some extra girlyness. I though the only way to really do this cake was in a teen heartthrob fashion, like something you'd have in the back of your diary at school.

The 'case' is covered with pink fondant, coloured with Claret Sugarflair colouring paste, I then used the off cuts to cut out the hearts, butterflies and stars too. As I said the buttercream is chocolate, I've lost my 1M Wilton nozzle (cries!) but I have been abusing it recently so went a bit old school with a normal swirl nozzle which actually did look really nice. I like using Green & Blacks cocoa powder, the pigment is so dark is really colours up nicely and it made my car small INCREDIBLE when I drove it over (it was actually quite lucky to survive the trip - nervous driver).
I thought it would be best to literally just cut him out and place him on the top, so it looks like he's coming out of the cake. I did then pipe buttercream onto the bottom of the picture so it didn't look too Art Attacky. After placing him on the front I placed a big pink heart on top and piped 21 onto it. I then dotted the pink hearts and stars around the picture with a couple overlapping. I also added some white chocolate stars to add another girly, and it fitted nicely in to the theme.

I mirrored the decoration on the back and gave the whole cake a generous dusting of pink cake glitter.  To finish it off I tied it up with a chocolate coloured ribbon making a bow at the front. I'm glad she liked the cake, I also used the image for her birthday card from Moonpig so she can keep him forever!

Nom!

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