Hello Kitty Pull Apart Cupcake Cake

Hello Kitty Pull Apart Cupcake Cake

There were a few birthdays celebrated this past weekend and what’s a birthday without cake?  I decided to attempt to make my first:

1. Pull apart cupcake cake
2. Homemade cupcakes
3. Homemade butter cream

I was successful in two out of the three which is not bad!  Which ones do you think I succeeded at?  Well if you guess 1. and 3. you are correct!  As for the homemade cupcakes, I think I over baked them because they became kind of hard on the outside and crumbly on the inside.  Here’s the recipe I used: http://smittenkitchen.com/blog/2009/07/best-birthday-cake/ from Smitten Kitchen which is the same website from where I get the brownie roll-out cookie recipe from (which are yummy).  Here’s my explanation for my scone/biscuit-like cupcake…The recipe said to bake 35-40 minutes for two 9-inch round cake pans.  It also said this recipe makes about 22-24 cupcakes.  So great I’m thinking!  But how long do I bake it for cupcakes?  I figured it had to be less than the amount for two round cakes.  So I opted for 30 minutes…Apparently that’s too long.  Hehe!  The taste was still yummy, but the texture was too crumbly and dry.  I brought a couple in for my taste tester coworkers and warned them ahead of time to taste at their own risk.  They are two of the nicest people I know so of course they’re going to tell me “It’s not that bad!”  So I decided to just go with this batch because I was partly lazy and partly too busy to bake another batch.  I figured if I slopped enough butter cream on there, and fed them to kids, they would eat anything, right?

I had a lot of fun creating the pull apart cupcake cake.  The only problem is that these types of cakes take A LOT of butter cream, so I had to make another batch the morning of my dance class (where I was to bring this to).  I placed them tightly together on my lovely Martha Stewart square cake stand (given to me by my friend, Justin…I love it and I use it ALL the time!), slathered lilac butter cream all over the top to make it look like one big cake.  Then I Googled online “how to smooth out butter cream on a cake” and learned to dip my spatula thing in hot water and carefully run it over the butter cream.  Again, not perfect, but good enough since I was running out of time!  Good tip, Google!

The girls pulling apart the cake! :)

Then I took a traced Hello Kitty face on parchment paper and placed it carefully over the lilac butter cream to trace with a toothpick.  Then I took a Wilton tip (I think it was #24 or some other star decorating tip) and filled in Hello Kitty’s face with white butter cream leaving the bow blank for pink butter cream.  Then I had some leftover royal icing that I mixed with black food coloring but the darkest I could get it without messing with the royal icing texture was gray.  So gray is it!  I used the gray royal icing to trace the pink bow and the whole Hello Kitty face.  I also used the gray royal icing to fill in her eyes and whiskers.  Then I took a little bit of the leftover white butter cream and mixed some yellow in for her nose.  The final product was really cute.  Not perfect, but with practice I will improve hopefully!  Can’t wait for the next birthday!!!

Here are some additional sites I visited for tips on cupcake cakes, butter cream recipes, etc:

Best Birthday Cake Recipe

Glorious Treats American Buttercream

How to Get Perfectly Smooth Buttercream

How to Write on a Cake 

Hello Kitty Cake Inspiration