After M's party last year, her mom and I had thought we'd do a Curious George party and have a monkey cake, but within the last couple of months, P has developed an affinity for Hello Kitty, so we changed gears. Especially when she requested her cake to be of the Hello Kitty variety.
We looked at a few pictures and asked P which she liked and didn't like. She was attracted to the fondant cakes, but I really didn't want to do that--I like frosting to taste yummy and know that preschoolers tend to eat only the frosting, leaving the cake behind. It would have been sad to see plates of untouched cake...
Fortunately, I found a technique to make a smooth looking cake with buttercream-type frosting and started gathering supplies.
First up, I baked the cake. It went in the freezer.
The next day, I made the frosting.
It set up for a little bit while I went to the gym. Once home, I pulled one layer of the cake* out of the freezer and let it start to thaw. I worked on the Hello Kitty face in the meantime (sorry, no photos of this stage), using an idea from Pinterest. I don't know that I'll make marshmallow 'fondant' again--it didn't get as smooth as I wanted and proved to be more trouble than it's worth (to me, anyway--hers looks really good...).
Once the cake was ready and leveled, I started with the crumb coat to make sure the cake didn't fall apart with the thicker coat. Then I slathered on the frosting and worked to make it as smooth as possible. My frosting was a little stiff: I should have added a little more water at the very beginning of making it, so this part was difficult.
This had to set for about 15 minutes. Then I could whip out the paper towel and smooth this even more.
Pretty nifty!
Then it was on to finishing the decorating. I did the flowers on the side first (again, the marshmallows were a pain, and I plan to invest in some fondant cutters...) and then worked on Hello Kitty herself.
The flowers insisted on drooping (another reason to go the commercial fondant route), so I ended up taking them off. It worked out well, though, because when it was time to cut the cake, I removed Hello Kitty's face, so each girl got a little flower on top of her piece of cake.
Party time!
She insisted on singing along. I thought that was adorable.
I forgot to take a picture of a slice! Just imagine a single layer slice of chocolate cake, ensconced in pink frosting...
*We knew a big cake would be too much. As it was, they only ate half of the small slice we gave them!
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