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!

Super Mario 5th Birthday Cake

So my little brother is a whole five years old, it only feels like a couple of years ago that he born a week after I moved down to Southampton for University.  And now he is five. Every year there is a new craze and obsession, we've had In The Night Garden, Peppa Pig, Toy Story and now Super Mario, in fact Mario was his favourite character from last year, but he loved that cake so much, and the games still that he wanted another cake like it for this year.

Last year he got a single tier cake with a Mario stencil on top and screenshots around the side as can be seen in my post here. Both that one and this year's one was for his bowling party (can you tell he likes the Wii?) And I'm not going to lie, but I do like having the best cake at the bowling alley as there usually is a couple of other parties going on. Last year my only competition was one of those caterpillar shaped cakes..this year someone too made a Mario cake....luckily (and not nastily.....maybe) they had a big fondant figure on top - but it was quite droopy looking although the birthday girl loved it. I am quite competitive and I like to have the best cakes....children's party or not - it's war!

So anyway, this year I thought I would up the game. I had to do better than last year. I decided to go for a two tiered cake, vanilla sponge and thick buttercream - I thought just buttercream rather than adding jam as with kids it can often get messy and the buttercream works as a kind of cement and give the outside a nice smooth surface for the fondant icing.  I liked the screenshot idea, so I wanted to do more of that and again better with a years experience on it.

Rather than a big Mario on top, I drafted in my brother Joe to help me, he's really good at illustration etc so I let/made him do Mario and I think he came out perfect! I did a lot of the outside decoration but again I made Joe add the finishing touches with the icing pen and help with the ideas and positioning of some of the detailing.

I covered the cake in blue fondant made with Baby Blue Sugarflair colouring paste, I then used a two different greens for the hills, Mint Green and Holly Green so try to show depth. Good plain old white made up the cloud, to get the cartoony 2D feel I used two or three circles rolled out and laid on top of eachother for a really billowy look. I didn't want it too look too busy, so I added a few of the block with question marks with coins above (which I then used the icing pen on to get some shading.) I also made the big bullet coloured with Liquorice colouring paste, and mixed this with some white to get the grey to make the shading.

I aslo made the flower coming out of the pipe, a shell and one of those brown mushrooms you have to jump on in the game (I don't know the technical gaming names! sorry!) We also added a big star in the sky as these feature a lot in the game, and I had a big patch of sky to fill! I got joe to draw faces on the clouds and star like they have on the game which really made the cartoon factor stand out.

I took about 8 hours all together to make the icings, ice the cake and then actually decorate! I obviously had to add the big number 5 on the front! His reaction was great when he saw it finished, considering he had actually seen it a bit earlier so there wasn't the big element of surprise. It came out a lot better than I imagined, he loved it, I'm happy I won the cake war at the bowling alley and now all I have to worry about it is.....what do I bake next year!?!
(bottom left picture is Joe, Josh and Me)

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