Hello Kitty Cake

Hi there friends! I hope you all had a fantastic weekend/Valentine's Day (if you've already celebrated it). Maybe you tried out those DIY heart-shaped cupcakes (if so, how did they turn out?).

If your weekend was anything like mine though, it was a whirlwind and flew by without there being enough time. Last week, I had even less time than I did over the weekend, because I took on two cakes in addition to everything else.

The first of these cakes was a Hello Kitty cake that my aunt and uncle requested for my cousin's 5th birthday. It was pretty straight forward - use the Hello Kitty pan to bake the cake and then ice it.
This process went quite smoothly. I used a vanilla cake recipe from Baking With The Cake Boss, and my basic butter cream recipe that I've come to know by heart.

There weren't any problems with this cake (though it did take about 1.5 times longer to bake than the recipe indicated because of the depth of the pan) but I feel the need to let you all in on a secret.

Ready for it?

Using a 16 Star Tip to ice the entire cake takes forever. I honestly spent over two hours just piping the white onto the majority of the cake.

In the end though, I was pretty satisfied with the results. It's not too often (yet) that I get to say that so I'll call this cake a success. Also, though I didn't get a chance to try out the cake, I was told that the recipe was a hit!

Check back in a couple days to hear about my less successful cake encounter that also took place last week!