Crissa's Cake Corner!: Hello Kitty Balloon Dream Cake & Desserts

I got to make the birthday cake and all the desserts for a Hello Kitty's Balloon Dream-themed dessert table to celebrate a little girl's first birthday. The main colour was baby pink, but there were lots of rainbow pastels to compliment. The cake topper and cookies were designed to match a specific Hello Kitty image that appeared on the party backdrop.

Hello Kitty Balloon Dream cake

Since I don't have a cookie cutter for this particular Hello Kitty, I printed the image out and used it as a template to hand cut the shape out of cookie dough, using a sharp knife. I'm glad I only had to make one of this, cuz cutting shapes out of cookie dough by hand is not all that easy or fun!

Hello Kitty template to hand-cut cookie dough

The other sugar cookies are balloon-shaped, which I thankfully have a cookie cutter for (used it a few times already!)

sugar cookies cooling on a rack

The cookies were decorated with fondant, in fun pastel rainbow colours. I used royal icing to add dots on the balloons. It was fun to arrange them like Hello Kitty is holding all the balloons. (I just put them down on an A3-sized piece of paper and drew the balloon strings on with a marker)

Hello Kitty and her sugar cookie balloons

The macarons were lots of different colours, filled with lemon meringue, smoked salted caramel and dark chocolate ganache. Looks like I should invest in a food processor to extra-finely grind the almonds I use! The macarons are looking pretty bumpy in this shot! Let's blame it on the poor lighting and my sucky photography skills...

colourful macarons

The cupcakes were red velvet, frosted with a pink swirl of vanilla Swiss meringue buttercream, and decorated simply with rainbow nonpareils. I love how I have the perfect cupcake cases to got with this theme!

red velvet cupcakes with pink frosting

The cake pops were dipped in white chocolate, dyed in pastel colours of the rainbow, sprinkled with rainbow nonpareils before the chocolate coating fully hardened. I used candy oils to colour the white chocolate. One can also use powdered food colouring. Regular or gel food colouring is not suitable for dyeing chocolate because it is water-based and will cause the chocolate to seize.

pastel rainbow cake pops

Now, for the birthday cake, it was a 5-layer vanilla butter cake, dyed in the colours of the rainbow, filled with vanilla Swiss meringue buttercream.

vanilla butter rainbow cake layers

The cake was covered with pink fondant, embossed with a quilted pattern. I don't have a quilted fondant imprint mat, so I used this trick to get the pattern: cut a triangle out of a piece of cardboard (I used a piece from the front of a box of Goldfish crackers). Make sure the cardboard isn't too thick cuz you'll need to bend it around the cake. Take a fondant quilting roller tool and roll it against the top of the triangle's diagonal edge, slowly working your way around the cake, evenly spacing between each row of lines. When you've gone completely around, flip the cardboard over to crisscross over the other lines that you've made and go all the way around the cake again. Pretty soon, you will have a nice quilted pattern.

getting the quilted pattern onto the cake

Usually, I put sugar pearls where each of the lines intersect, but for this cake, I put little white stars, to better match the party theme. Thank goodness I have a tiny star plunger cutter to cut out all those stars! I brushed each star with a little bit of water and sprinkled white glittery disco dust on all of them to give them a bit of sparkle.

tiny fondant stars

giving the stars a little sparkle

To top the cake, I made a tall Hello Kitty, holding up rainbow balloons which spelled out the birthday girls name, and large glittery pink number one. Hello Kitty is dressed in the same outfit as the Hello Kitty in the top right-hand corner of the party backdrop, in the same design as the sugar cookies.

Hello Kitty cake

I intentionally made Hello Kitty a little taller than usual, so that she would be taller than the number one, and posed her with her body at an angle. However, I received feedback that this made her look like "an imitation Hello Kitty" since it looks like she has a neck. Apparently Hello Kitty doesn't have a neck either (poor thing already has no mouth.)

tall Hello Kitty sugar figurine

Anyway, I stressed out to "fix" the Hello Kitty figurine instead of making a new one, cuz there was no time for a new figurine to dry and set properly for the party! So, after a little surgery to amputate her legs above the knee, twist her body so that she's facing squarely to the front, and scrape off her first set of eyes and replace them with slightly bigger eyes set a little closer together, we finally had a satisfactory, not-so-imitation-looking, Hello Kitty!

"tweaked" Hello Kitty, after minor surgery

When I make sugar cartoon figurines, I focus on capturing the character's features, not exactly replicating a factory-made plastic toy! It's all a matter of perspective though, and I always try my best to make what is requested, even though it was still doubtful whether or not the birthday girl's mummy was going to approve of this version of Hello Kitty!! I think Hello Kitty looks pretty darn cute as she is, not to mention that she's holding rainbow balloons and standing on top of a neatly quilted pink fondant cake with glittery stars!! (I don't have a mini balloon cutter, so I had the idea to combine a small circle cutter and the side of an ivy leaf cutter to get the proper balloon shape!)

a closer look at Hello Kitty version 2.0

Anyway, these colourful rainbow desserts and the cake went on this Hello Kitty Balloon Dream dessert table, styled by All Mommy Wants. Indeed, the birthday girl's mummy was very pleased when she saw the full set up and all the desserts. I am glad that she thought "the Hello Kitty on the cake was wonderful". Geeez!!! All that stress! At least we have a happy ending. (Apparently it's my poor photography skills or lack of a better camera phone that lead to the false impression of a sub-standard Hello Kitty sugar figurine...) In any case, happy 1st birthday, baby Daphne! Wishing you lots of happy dreams, filled with cute characters and lots of rainbows.