A Hello Kitty 1st Birthday & Hello Kitty Macarons!

My little Ella turned 1 in February! and for as long as I can remember one of the things I was most excited about for becoming a mom was the parties I was going to be able to throw for my children! My mom always threw us the best parties growing up! 

Ella is a huge fan of cats, and after receiving quite a lot of Hello Kitty prezzies at Christmas time she suddenly became very interested in Hello Kitty and since I've always been a fan too it seemed like the perfect theme! 

I was so in love with these polka dot confetti balloons that came all the way from Abu Dhabi! 

Is anyone else in love with chevrons? I am! So I was super excited to find this chevron scrapbooking card in the exact colours of the party! I made a little monthly bunting of all the growing up pics we took of her each month.

I made this tissue paper garland thanks to a tutorial from you tube! it was super easy! 

and the birthday girl wore a special Hello Kitty dress for the occasion too! 

My sister made these delicious coconut cupcakes topped with raspberry frosting...

and ordered these super cute toppers to go on them that my husband designed.

We used them on the jars for the drinks too, on top of these gorgeous doilies taped with chevron tape of course (a pinterest inspired craft there!)

and no parties complete without some stripey straws!!! 

I made these homemade coconut chocolate dipped marshmallows

and dipped these chocolate oreos in white chocolate and drew on their little Hello Kitty faces.

I also dipped these pretzels and gave them a little Hello Kitty twist!

but my real masterpiece were these Hello Kitty macarons! More on them in a minute...

My sister helped me whip up this 6 layer chocolate cake filled with pink ombre swiss meringue buttercream and covered in chocolate swiss meringue buttercream.  If there is one thing I hate it's fondant! and I know typically children's birthday cakes involve fondant but I wanted to make sure there was no fondant in sight at Ella's party, just yummy edible and delicious treats! and how cute was the bunting Auntie Mara made too?!

It was soon time to cut the cake and it was going to be Ella's first ever taste of cake and chocolate! I was excited! but do you know the little rascal didn't even like it! All that time and effort and thought that went into the cake and she couldn't care less!! haha! Hopefully next year she'll be more excited for her cake!! 

The adults still enjoyed it though!! That frosting was so creamy and dreamy! 

She was much more excited about present opening! and we even made a fun little Hello Kitty Photo Booth area too! 

It was a lovely day spent with all her family, with pulled pork topped dogs for lunch with homemade guac and a whole lot of treats obviously!! 

So...back to those tricky little macarons! I always knew macarons came with a certain aspect of horror from many bakers...as they are typically known as not easy little treats to master! So I was fully anticipating they probably wouldn't go right first time...

I didn't think I'd have to make them 4 times to get them right in the end, but hey! I think my final version turned out pretty good!

What was wrong with the previous versions...well one was totally flat, the others were way overdone, the 3rd batch were less flat but still browning around the edges (I was trying to make them just white) so I tinted the batter a slight pink and this prevented them from browning....and yes the fourth batch had feet - hurrah! victory! 

I was inspired by Java Cupcake's adorable Hello Kitty macarons and used her template sheet to pipe them on but my first batch using her recipe was a flop so I changed recipes.  It might have been that my technique had just been wrong first time around but I didn't want to take any chances.

Eventually, it was this recipe and this youtube video that made everything come together and turn out great! There is also an FAQ on macarons that you should read too just to be thorough and fully prepared! 

Hello Kitty Macarons:

Makes 24 Macarons, 48 shells

From Food Nouveau

3 egg whites

210g icing sugar

125g almond flour

30g caster sugar

Red gel food colouring

24 yellow chocolate beans (like mini smarties)

48 red heart sprinkles

Edible glue

Black edible food pen

Print out the Hello Kitty template pattern.   Lay it on a baking tray. Tape a piece of parchment paper over the pattern.

Measure out your ingredients very precisely.

Sift the icing sugar and almond flour together through a sieve into a food processor.  Blitz for 2 minutes.  Stop and scrape down the side of the processor with a spatula.  Blitz again for 1 more minute to make sure it is as fine as possible.  Sift half the sugar and flour mixture into a large bowl.  Throw away any larger bits of the almonds that remain in the sieve to ensure a smooth batter.  Sift the second half of the sugar and flour mixture.  Set aside for later.

Beat the egg whites in the bowl of an electric mixer.  When the eggs are bubbly and the whisks are leaving marks, add the caster sugar slowly over the next minute or so.  Keep on beating at medium-high speed for 3-4 minutes until the egg whites are stiff.  (It is really helpful to watch the youtube tutorial I linked to above because it shows you pictures of what each stage needs to look like).  It is only stiff enough when the peaks hold themselves, if they fall back into the mixture you need to keep beating.  

Add food colouring, a few drops at a time - a little goes a long way.

Using a spatula, fold the egg whites delicately until the colour is well incorporated.  

Add a third of the almond/sugar mixture to the egg whites and keep on folding delicately - never beat.

As you incorporate the almond mixture, the batter seems to curdle, but as you fold it becomes creamy again.  

Keep on adding the almond mixture and folding to incorporate it, so no pockets of dry ingredients remain.  

In the end the batter will be quite thick, shiny and creamy.  

Spoon the 3/4 of the mixture into a piping bag fitted with a large round tip.  Pipe out the circle of the Hello Kitty faces.  To make round macarons easily, keep the tip very close to the parchment paper and lift off quickly when enough batter has come out.  

Spoon 1/4 of the mixture into a piping bag fitted with a Wilton #4 tip and pipe the ears onto the already piped out circles.  

Once all the macarons are piped out, bang the sheets against the worktop to the let the air bubbles out and flatten the shells.

Don't forget to slide the template out from under the parchment paper before baking.  

Let the macarons rest for at least 20 minutes.  Preheat oven to 150 degrees C. 

Bake the macarons for 14 minutes.  To test their doneness, tap lightly on the shell.  When ready, they are firm on their feet. 

Let the shells cool completely before removing them from the parchment paper.  They should be easy to lift off.  

Using edible glue, brush a little on the back of the yellow chocolate beans.  

Stick them in the centre of the macaron.  

Using an edible black food pen, draw the whiskers and eyes on.  Brush some edible glue on the back of two red heart sprinkles.  Arrange them across the ear of the macaron so it looks like Hello Kitty's bow.  Wait for about 30 minutes for the glue to set and the face to be ready.

Fill the shells with whatever filling you fancy.  Ganache works great.  I filled them with some of the leftover chocolate swiss meringue buttercream from the cake.  

Sandwich the shells together.  

Store in an airtight container until ready to serve.  They are best served soon after piping the filling because if you leave them filled for too long the filling can make the shell soggy.  

Eat and enjoy, and pat yourself on the back - you just made macarons! hooray! 

My First Ever Baby Shower!

So no-one really close to me has ever had a baby...or if they have they lived too far away for me to do anything about it! So I've never been to a baby shower which for a 26 year old mormon is pretty unheard of! 

As fate would cruelly have it, a few months after we moved to Vancouver my sister called to tell me she was pregnant and I also found out one of my best friends from high school was pregnant (the first out of our whole group of friends!) so I was more than heartbroken at the thought I was going to be missing both of these super important events, including their baby showers! With my love of all things sweet, and planning dessert tables I have been waiting to throw someone a baby shower for years! So when I met my friend Nicole at church here in Vancouver and found out she was expecting I knew I wanted to do something special for her! 

 I've decided if I could just be a party planner for the rest of my life I'd be so happy! I spent every day leading up to the baby shower dreaming up colour combinations and styles of table decorations! I was sad that I didn't have my cake stand collection here in Vancouver and so I had to make do with the limited resources I had but considering it was on a budget, it came together pretty well! 

I knew the chocolate ganache raspberry cupcakes were going to be the main focus of the table and so I decided the colour scheme should be pink to tie in with the pink raspberry frosting.  I spent a while thinking about what colour would work well with pink and so in the end I went with lime green.  I found that gorgeous polka dot sparkly tissue paper in the exact shades I needed and even found matching serviettes and paper plates in those colours too.

Luckily, my friend Kristen was able to lend me this pretty cake stand to make the cupcakes stand out...

I bought some pink and green plates to display the rest of the goodies, and I whipped up some of my oreo truffles because a party isn't a party without an oreo truffle! The green ones were mint flavour, 

and the pink ones I just made with regular oreo's and milk chocolate coating.  I drizzled each truffle in green or pink candy melt, and then put them in these cute colour co-ordinating mini cupcake liners.

I also tried out these creamy lime squares and I added some shredded coconut into the shortbread base because coconut and lime is a winner! 

These raspberry lemonade bars turned out great, and I loved how vibrant the colour turned out!

Kristen also brought a huge bowl of delicious fruit salad which I forgot to take a picture of! That was a great thing to bring because it was nice to even out all the sweetness with just a bit of healthiness on the side!!

I ordered the stripey straws off a baking website - they were my fave part of the table! and I also bought the mason jars from a canning factory, because drinks in jars makes everything more fun! 

To fill the jars, Cassie made up a few jugs of some rather delicious fresh raspberry lemonade! with real fresh raspberries in it too - it was sooo good!

Here's Nicole, who the baby shower was honouring! with the cute big sister Cambree.

Cambree's favourite part of the dessert table were the chocolate covered pretzels! She sure loved digging into them! as her face and hands will tell you!

After everyone devoured the food, it was time for a little present opening...

isn't this 'little sister' onesie the cutest! and Paisley, the baby of honour, is modelling it!

Cambree was enjoying all the excess wrappings!

Here's some of the lovely ladies that attended: Lindsay, Denise and Jessie

and here's my co-hosts Kristen and Cassie who produced some super fun shower games! 

One of the games was where you have to describe a baby word first round, then next round just use actions and the third round you just use one word.  

With quite a lot of the words involved there were some very funny actions going on! I think the look Lindsay is giving Denise here is even funnier than her action! 

I'm thinking maybe this was our 'hospital' action where we tried to recreate giving birth in an action!

I have no idea what's going on here but again, Kristen's face watching Nicole's actions below is pretty hilarious!

It was such a great night.  I love these girls I have met in Vancouver so much, I can't believe I only have 2 months left to enjoy them and then we're homeward bound back to the UK! 

Chocolate & Coconut Birthday Layer Cake

A few months back a guy from my church sent me a text asking if I could make a birthday cake for his wife. I love making cakes, especially birthday cakes! I will bake cakes any day of the week if I am asked, try me - it's true! but unfortunately the date of her birthday was the same day as my very last ever university exam for my masters degree.  

As much as I love baking and it will generally take precedence over anything else scholastically related or other...even if I had to draw the line at replacing last minute revision by a baking session...

but I really didn't want to let him down, after all he had showered me with compliments in the text message about how his wife loves following my blog and everything I make and no other cake would be good enough.

So I told him, if he didn't mind it being a day late, I could whip it up the evening after my exam and drop it round the next day and so it was a done deal! 

The only guidance he gave me was that she likes things that are pink or girly, and I knew she was a lover of coconut so this coconut and chocolate layer cake complete with plenty of pink and plenty of girliness was created!

I used my go to chocolate cake recipe but substituted the regular milk for coconut milk.  I decided it was looking a little too pink and so came up with the idea to pipe little chocolate frosting swirls all the way around the top of the cake.  I melted a little coconut chocolate into the frosting too to give it a coconut hint.  

After I dropped it off, I received a text message from the husband saying he had been given the duty of cutting it since his wife thought it was too pretty to cut so I think it went down well! 

If I had a picture of the inside of the cake you would see pink frosting peeking out from all the chocolatey layers but as thorough as a food blogger as I am, giving someone a birthday cake with one slice cut out of purely for photography purposes is a definite no-no, so you'll have to use your imaginations or bake one up for yourself to see the prettiness! 

Chocolate & Coconut Layer Cake:

Serves 16

Adapted from Cupcakes from The Primose Bakery

230g good quality dark chocolate (70% cocoa solids - I used Lindt)

170g unsalted butter, at room temperature

350g light soft brown sugar

3 large eggs, free range or organic, separated

370g plain flour, sifted

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

1 1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

500ml coconut milk, at room temperature

2 teaspoons good quality vanilla extract (I use Nielsen-Massey)

Preheat oven to 180 degrees C.

Grease three 8" cake tins (this recipe makes 3 cakes, I had a silicone cake tin disaster with one of my cakes so only ended up using 2 in the end!)

Break the chocolate into pieces and melt in 30 second intervals in a glass bowl in the microwave, or using a bain marie.  Set bowl aside to cool. 

Cream the butter and sugar in a large mixing bowl for 3-5 minutes until the mixture is pale and smooth.

Put the egg yolks in a separate bowl, and beat them for several minutes.  Slowly add the egg yolks to the creamed butter and sugar and beat well.  

Add the cooled chocolate to this mixture and beat well again.

Combine the flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda and salt in a separate bowl.  

Combine the coconut milk and vanilla extract in a jug.  Add one third of the flour to the creamed mixture and beat well.  Pour in one third of the milk and beat again.  Repeat these steps until all the flour and milk have been added.  

In a clean bowl, whisk the egg whites until soft peaks start to form.  Carefully, fold the egg whites into the main batter using a metal spoon (do not beat or you will take the air out of the mixture).

Divide the mixture evenly between the cake tins and bake for about 30 minutes.

Insert a knife into the centre of one of the cakes, it should come out clean if cooked.

Leave to cool in cake tins for 10 minutes.  Gently run a knife around the edge of the cake and release cake from the tin, transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.  

Coconut Frosting:

Makes one batch (I used two batches to frost the above cake)

Adapted from The Hummingbird Bakery

375g icing sugar

120g unsalted butter, softened

40ml coconut milk

Beat the icing sugar and butter together in a freestanding electric mixer on medium speed until the mixture comes together.  

Add coconut milk and beat until it has been incorporated.

Turn up to high speed and beat for 5 minutes until the frosting is light and fluffy.

Tint the frosting using red gel colour to the desired shade of pale pink.

Repeat this again to make a second batch (I don't like to make double batches in one go because when you're dealing with such large amounts of icing sugar it leaves a sugar covering over everything in your kitchen!)

Chocolate Coconut Frosting:

Makes half a batch (enough to pipe the swirls above)

Adapted from Cupcakes from The Primrose Bakery

45g dark chocolate (70% Lindt)

45g dark coconut chocolate (I used Lindt Excellence)

113g unsalted butter, at room temperature

1/2 tbsp semi-skimmed milk, at room temperature

1/2 tsp good quality vanilla extract

145g icing sugar, sifted

Melt the chocolate in 30 second intervals in a glass bowl in the microwave until smooth.  Leave to cool slightly.  In a freestanding bowl of an electric mixer, beat the butter, milk, vanilla extract and icing sugar until smooth - this can take several minutes.  Add the melted chocolate and beat again until smooth.

To Assemble:

Level your cakes using a very sharp knife or a cake leveller.

Apply a generous amount of coconut frosting in between each layer of cake.  Apply a final thin crumb coat all over the cake.  Put in the fridge for 30 minutes.  Take out of the fridge, and apply a very thin layer of coconut frosting.  Smooth it out using a sharp knife dipped in hot water.  

Using a open star tip or a 1m nozzle, pipe the remainder of your coconut frosting around the outside of the cake, starting in the middle and working your way out in small circles to create the swirls.

Do individual swirls on the top of the cake using the chocolate-coconut frosting.  Finish with a pink sugar heart on each swirl. 

Melt chocolate candy melts in a small bowl.  Put in a piping bag once slightly cooled.  Pipe out the writing you want to put on top of the cake on to a piece of parchment paper.  Once it is completely cool and hard, transfer it to the top of the cake and press it into the frosting.