monkey baby shower cake

I can't believe that I'm only now writing about this baby shower cake that I made for my friend Cindy my last year, and next week her baby is turning ONE already! How fast time flies!

Since the baby would be born in the Year of the Monkey, she wanted a monkey cake, so a few weeks before the baby shower I started making a little fondant monkey for the topper. To see the steps, you can check out this monkey cake that I made previously, except this time I added a little pink fondant bow!

For the cake itself, I made a 6-inch vanilla cake, filled with freshly whipped cream and fresh sliced strawberries (sorry, forgot to take pictures!) and then frosted it with pink cream cheese buttercream. I usually do a quick crumb coat, then let it chill for 30 minutes in the fridge, and then do a final coat, smoothing it out with an offset spatula.

To finish it off, I piped a white beaded border along the bottom, and the baby's name, Kailie, along the side of the cake.

And then it was time to add the fondant monkey topper!

I added a little buttercream to the bottom of the monkey topper, just to secure it in place.

Hope you enjoyed your baby shower, Cindy!

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!!!

baseball cookies and onesie cookies

Remember these pastel Hello Kitty cookies, macarons, and mini cupcakes that I made for a bridal shower a couple of years ago? Well recently that bride contacted me about making goodies again ... this time for her baby shower! So exciting!!!

She had originally wanted a cake and cookies with a baseball theme, but the weekend of the baby shower was the same weekend that I was to be in LA to give a Hello Kitty cupcake workshop. So she opted for just the cookies to be done several days in advance, as I could wrap each one individually to keep them fresh for the baby shower.

For the baseball cookies, I used my go-to sugar cookie recipe (which can be found in my book, The Hello Kitty Baking Book!), rolled the dough out to 1/8 inch thick, and cut out shapes with a 3.5 inch round cookie cutter. Then after baking and cooling, I whipped up a batch of royal icing (recipe also in the book!), piped a circle outline with stiff icing, and then filled it in with runny icing.

After the white icing had dried for several hours, I used red stiff icing and a Wilton #2 tip to pipe my baseball stitches on the cookies.

I repeated the same process for the onesie cookies, except with this onesie cookie cutter, and with blue icing for the onesie details.

So cute!

Congratulations Julieta! Hope you had a wonderful baby shower!

giraffe baby shower cake

A few months ago, my neighbor and good friend Cindy was helping to plan a baby shower for one of her friends, and she asked me to make a small baby shower cake for the dessert table. It wouldn't be for the the 100+ guests to eat, rather a little cake for the parents-to-be to bring home and enjoy. Since the baby shower theme colors were yellow and gray, we decided on a 6-inch yellow cake with gray letters and piped beaded border. And a little giraffe fondant topper for the top!

Inspired by the fondant work by Paola's Creations, I set out to make my fondant giraffe. I've only done a few fondant toppers in the past (an elephant with balloon, a mustached baby, and "BABY" letters), so I was excited to be making a giraffe!

First I tinted my fondant with a combination of lemon yellow and golden yellow gel-based food coloring. After kneading the coloring into the fondant to get an even tone, I roughly formed the giraffe's pieces.

For the head, I made ears and added a light brown fondant for the muzzle, and dark brown tinted fondant for the little tuft of hair. Then I used an edible food marker to add his eyes and nostrils.

Then I added dark brown fondant to the feet and a dark brown tuft of hair, and then light brown fondant for the spots and antlers. And then I could assemble it!

Isn't he cute?!

I also made some green fondant leaves for the giraffe to sit on, to add a little more color to the cake.

For the cake, we had decided on strawberry shortcake, so I baked up my go-to vanilla cake (recipe in my book, The Hello Kitty Baking Book!), cut each layer in half horizontally, and filled it with freshly whipped cream and sliced strawberries.

Then I made a batch of yellow buttercream and covered the top and sides of the cake with it.

I smoothed out the frosting out with an offset spatula, and then piped a quick beaded border along the bottom with gray buttercream.

After adding lettering and securing the fondant giraffe with a bit of buttercream, I thought it was so cute as-is that I almost didn't want to add the fondant leaves!

But in the end I added them anyway, for a pop of color.



The best thing about making fondant toppers is that the recipient can keep it indefinitely! Just wipe the frosting off of the bottom, and you can keep it on a bookshelf or something, as long as it's not in the sun and in is a cool dry place.

Hope you had a wonderful baby shower, CC and Ryan!