Chloe's 4th Birthday

My niece Chloe is all about Hello Kitty right now, so doing a Hello Kitty theme for her birthday party was an obvious choice. She also LOVES Pizza Hut, so that is where we had the party. I volunteered to make the cake and let her choose what she wanted, which meant I ended up buying the Wilton pan for Hello Kitty and using that.

It's not perfect, but I thought it turned out well. I frosted it last night and the black frosting bled onto the pink frosting a bit. That's frustrating but a learning moment.

The cake Chloe picked out was actually a two-tiered cake that used the Hello Kitty pan. I was going to do that but then remembered that in January I ordered personalized cupcake toppers from Etsy. Since I had bought them, I was going to use them. I ended up making 12 regular cupcakes to put the toppers in and 5 square cupcakes to frost and spell out Chloe's name. Chloe wanted her cake to be strawberry, so I just used a mix for the Hello Kitty part. For the cupcakes, I wanted to do something a little more special. I ended up making the Strawberry Cupcake recipe from Better Homes and Gardens which starts with a white cake mix and gets jazzed up from there. (Note: my grocery store did not have strawberries in syrup so I thawed a 16oz bag of whole strawberries, cut them in half, threw in several spoonfuls of sugar, then let it make its own syrup.) The cupcakes were yummy. Several people asked for the recipe. It is one that I would highly recommend.



Yes, there was a lot of cake at the party. Most of it was eaten though. Even if none of it had been, it would have been worth it to see how excited Chloe was.

Happy birthday, Chlo-Bear!