Hello Kitty cake

I went out of my comfort zone and made a different kind of cake for a baby shower I went to yesterday.  For one, I didn't use a chiffon cake recipe (yes, really!) and secondly, I baked in a novelty pan for the first time!

The Wilton pan I used is actually designed for a one-layered cake only but I wanted two so I baked one cake (vanilla) in that pan and a separate sheet cake (chocolate) which I just carved in the proper shape.  I did this so I would have a flat surface for the bottom layer (without the Hello Kitty face indentations). On hindsight though, I could have just baked the chocolate cake on the shaped pan too then just leveled the cake off. That would have been okay too.  I saved all the trimmings from the sheet cake so I could also make cake pops out of them later.

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I filled the bottom layer with cut-up strawberries.   Strawberries are quite expensive nowadays but since I didn't need a lot, I didn't mind buying some for this purpose.  I also tried the Rich 'n Smooth Tropic as a filling to go with the strawberries.  I wouldn't normally use something of this sort but the owner of the cake decorating supplies store I go to convinced me to try it.  It's surprisingly pretty good.  Very easy to use, tastes great considering it's non-dairy plus it's not at all sweet.

I crumb coated the whole cake with my usual buttercream but made sure I didn't cover the markings on the top or else I wouldn't know where to correctly pipe the bow, eyes, nose, and whiskers!

I am not a big fan of colouring buttercream, especially when it's very deep colours like red and black.  It's a good thing, I only needed a little of these colours.

After hundreds of little piped stars, the cake was finally completed!  It actually turned out to be bigger than I expected.

Out of the chocolate cake scraps and leftover buttercream, I was able to make 18 cake pops!  I wrapped them individually so I can give them to the little kids present at the baby shower.

What else can I say but that the cake was really delicious! I volunteered to cut and serve as I wanted to see first what it looked like inside.  

The vanilla cake layer was a little taller than the chocolate cake layer so next time, I might just use the shaped pan for both so I would get a more even height.

Overall, I am so glad I tried something different this time.  This is actually a practice cake.  Very soon,  I would have to make the same cake for my son's girlfriend's little sister's birthday.  She is turning 8 and she requested specifically for something Hello Kitty. I'm really looking forward to doing this all over again!