I write a lot about Hello Kitty food experiences here: the VIP party for the 35th anniversary, the Hello Kitty Kawaii Tea, etc. So I thought I’d tell you where I went recently…

Last week I went to Hawaii and instead of spending time with my family and freiends, I drove straight to the Sanrio Cafe. Ok, not exactly – but I was pretty excited. I love Sanrio and try to regularly make Hello Kitty cupcakes, chocolates, Hello Kitty oreos all on my own – but here, the Cafe was doing all that an more.

Located in the Pearl Ridge shopping mall, there isn’t much around here. At first glance you’d think it was just a regular ol’ Sanrio store, but right on the corner is a tiny storefront.

When I say tiny, I mean this place was TINY. No tables or chairs, just a walk up register. There were sandwiches and coffees, but of course the desserts were the first thing I looked at. So many cute things!

Hold on to your horses, I took a lot of pictures for you…

These desserts were just the right size, TINY. Just the way I like them.

Could you die? Little chocolate Keroppis – just like the Hello Kitty ones I attempted! These were so cute, I need those molds!!

Cutest brownies ever!

OF COURSE the mochi caught my eye – you know I love mochi - I wanted to take some back to L.A. but seeing as how it had a very short shelf life, I knew it wouldn’t make it home. ~sigh~ Next time.

Instead I went for a little dobash cake. So tiny and cute. The cafe had a great array of desserts, I wish I could have tried them all. And here’s a tip for people who follow my blog – the Cafe has lots of neat hard to find Hello Kitty cookie cutters/kitchen items! So all those cupcakes I’ve made…yeah, there’s more to come for sure!

I went back a few times during my trip (how could I not?!) and the desserts seemed to change every day which was pretty neat. This is a cuteconcept that I think would do great in other cities across the country. Hopefully they’ll open one on the mainland!

Since the Hello Kitty chocolate heads were a bust (har har) I decided to go simple and make some very easy fondant toppers. I always tell people, working with fondant CAN be easy. You don’t have to go over the top with it, a lot can be said with a little. While it’s true, I do work with brightly colored fondant, (case in point: Superhero Cupcakes) sometimes you can convey an image simply…with white.

I made up a batch of Ovaltine cupcakes, which were delicious of course, but so dark. I wanted to play up the dark and light aspect of them and be subtle with the cuteness.

I took some plain white fondant and just used cookie cutters to cut out ‘Tippy’ and ‘Cathy’. (Those are Hello Kitty’s friends, for those in the know. I know entirely too much about Sanrio, obviously.)

The size was perfect to top a cupcake and the image wasn’t over powering, just clean and sweet. Exactly what I wanted.

I hand frosted some cupcakes, no piping just freeform – with chocolate frosting and some with cream cheese frosting just so that the box had a nice balance.

Well defined cookie cutters are great for fondant work especially if you don’t want to spend hours cutting by hand.

These would be great for a tea party! A classic black and white with just enough fun to make you smile!

Chocolate. Hello Kitty. What more could you want?

I adore ice cube molds – they are NOT just for ice. When I made little chocolate Lego men they were so cute – how could these Hello Kitty ice molds go wrong? Er…

ingredients:
6 ounces chocolate (I used Belgian : Callebaut)

In a double boiler melt down the chocolate until you get a nice runny consistency. Spoon or pipe the chocolate into the molds.

Using a toothpick I swirled the chocolate around a bit to get rid of any air bubbles and ‘dropped’ the mold once just to be sure there were no air pockets.

To set faster, I put the mold in the freezer for 5 minutes. Then just pop them right out! Easy, right? Uh oh.

Hm. NOT so easy. Because this mold was hard plastic, not lovely silicone like the Lego mold, there were problems. Big problems. Loss of limbs. Crushed ears. Kitty carnage everywhere. So very sad. So I did what any good medic would do and SEVERED THOSE KITTY HEADS CLEAN OFF. It pained, me, but it had to be done.

I hoped that when I placed them carefully with love on top of a cupcake no one would be the wiser. So I made up some Banana Cupcakes with Cream Cheese frosting…I know, I know, two things I hate: banana and cream cheese?? Don’t worry – these weren’t for me.

I think they still turned out adorable, but I am definitely going to try this again with a little more patience. Hopefully the poor kitties will survive next time…

It’s surprisingly easy to make Oreos at home. Yes, yes, why would you want to when you can get them for $1.99 at the market? Well…can you get SUPER KAWAII OREOS at the market?? I think not. That’s why I made Hello Kitty Oreos!! whee! (I know, why would anyone do this – I ask myself that all the time.)

I love Hello Kitty – I’ve made her as cupcakes, as pasta, as waffles, as MOFFLES, I’ve done it all. You can find homemade Oreo recipes all over the internet, here’s how I made mine:

ingredients (cookies):
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup Valrhona cocoa powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons (1 1/4 sticks) butter
1 egg

ingredients (filling):
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, softened
2 cups powdered sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Prep baking sheets with parchment or silpats.

In a bowl, whisk the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Set aside.

In the bowl of an electric mixer cream the butter and sugar. Add the egg until combined.

Slowly add the flour mixture, careful it will fly everywhere – until incorporated. You will get a nice dough that will pull away from the sides of the bowl. It’s a rather soft dough, so I like to chill it for 10-15 minutes.

Now, to make the kitty faces, I first cut them out and placed them on the sheet. They looked perfect right? Then I baked them.

Not so perfect. This dough is tempermental and obviously perfect for little round Oreos, but I was not making little round Oreos, I was making Super Kawaii Fun Time Hello Kitty Oreos. SO. Instead…

I just pressed the cookie cutter into the flat blobs quickly AFTER I pulled them out of the oven and voila! Perfect kitties.

So – back to the basics, I baked them in the oven for 9 minutes, then (after re-cutting) transferred them to a wire rack to cool.

Now on to the filling. Most homemade Oreo recipes call for shortening. NO. I despise shortening almost as much as cream cheese and you know how I feel about cream cheese. SO, instead I just use butter, through and through – and it came out perfectly fine.

In the bowl of an electric mixer on low, beat the butter, sugar and vanilla until crumbly and combined. Once you don’t have stray powder-y sugar anywhere, go for it. Crank that baby up to number 6 and until you get a nice fluffy filling reminiscent of….hey, an Oreo!

Put the filling in a piping bag and pipe onto the backs of the cookies. Now you can spread it with a knife, but I am super obsessive and wanted that same blobby puffy side look that regular Oreos have. The piping bag will give you that look. Pipe a dollop onto the back of a cookies, spread it a bit with an offset spatula, then press down on the filling with the top cookie.

There you have it. Your super over the top cute Oreo. So delicious. It wasn’t that hard, right? Ok fine. Stick with your boring old ROUND ones. You’re right it’d totally take less time…but it’d be HALF AS CUTE~!

I was just about to leave.

Proud of myself that there was nothing in the store that I wanted.

Then I turned the corner.

I saw it and immediately said ‘I’ll take it.’

And that is how the world’s cutest stew pot ended up in my kitchen.

The thing is – it was a set! But I passed on the accompanying saucepan. I have some self control, sheesh!

Hm, maybe I’ll go back next week…

I got this sandwich maker for xmas and was SO excited only to find out there were no images of Hello Kitty burned into the sandwich. What.

Nope, just a plain old sandwich press. BO- to the RING. Oh well. I had promised the kids sandwiches for dinner, so we tried it out anyway.

I was going for a ‘pizza pocket’ so I set up pizza sauce, mozzarella cheese, colby cheese, salami, turkey and olives. (These were the ingredients requested, btw).

My SIL went heavy on the olives, the Kid went heavy on the cheese, and the Baby? Just meat. Nothin’ else. He couldn’t be bothered, I guess.

As everyone assembled their sandwiches, I buttered both sides of the bread and stuck it in. Oddly enough, the Baby’s (cheese-less) turned out the BEST. Just perfect little sandwich shapes! Meanwhile the overloaded cheese did a number on the machine and it was a cheese-apocalypse. Melted cheese everywhere that took me over and hour to try and scrape off. Not. Good.

I love this thing, but really the clean up will be the death of me. Since this one only cost $10 at Target, I’m thinking I should go big pimpin’ and buy a ‘professional’ one, I think (hope) the clean up wouldn’t be such a nightmare.

The kids (and the SIL) had so much fun making their own sandwiches they asked to do it again the following night! I’d still like a Hello Kitty face burned into mine, just sayin’.

This is the last week for the Hello Kitty: 3 Apples exhibit at Royal T. Seems like I was just at the grand opening a few weeks ago. Oh yeah. It WAS a few weeks ago! I will be sad to see it go, but before it leaves I got in one last look AND had the world’s cutest tea with some friends…

I got a special invite to the VIP opening night party for the Three Apples – Hello Kitty exhibit at the Royal T Cafe in Culver City. It’s Hello Kitty’s 35 anniversary so there was a big party with tons of press, celebrities (Paris Hilton and Kimora Lee Simmons showed up) and of course…sweets!

What’s a birthday without a cake – three of them: strawberry, vanilla and chocolate!

In honor of Hello Kitty’s anniversary, here are some of my favorite Hello Kitty recipes that I’ve done in the past. Enjoy!

Mochi Waffle – *moffles

Hello Kitty Fondant Cupcakes

Hello Kitty Baked Pasta

My kids love waffles. So much that they were asking for them everyday for about two months. Talk about boredom in the kitchen. I try to liven them up when I can (hello, moffles!) , but something about a nice chocolate-y Hello Kitty just sounded good…

ingredients:
2 cups flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
3 Tablespoons sugar
3 Tablespoons cocoa powder
3 teaspoons baking powder
1-1/2 cups milk
2 eggs
2 Tablespoon melted butter
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 cup mini chocolate chips

In a bowl whisk flour, salt, sugar, cocoa powder and baking powder.

Carefully stir in the milk and the eggs. Then add the butter and vanilla until you get a nice batter. Don’t overstir. Fold in the mini chocolate chips.

Make according to your waffle maker directions.

This is an easy meal, and kids love to eat out of the little ‘bowls.’. I was lucky enough to find the world’s cutest Hello Kitty pasta, but any small shape will do!

ingredients:
melted butter
1 package pasta (small shapes are best)
1 28 ounce can crushed tomatoes
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 cloves garlic
1 small onion
1 teaspoon oregano
1/2 teaspoon basil
salt
pepper
1-1/2 cups mozzarella cheese, shredded

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Prep six large ramekins (or 8 small) by greasing the inside with melted butter. Set aside.

Boil pasta according to directions. Drain and set aside.

While the pasta is boiling, start the sauce. In a large pan saute the chopped garlic and onion in olive oil for a few minutes. Add the tomatoes, oregano, basil and salt and pepper to taste.

Mix the sauce with the drained pasta and spoon into your prepped ramekins. Top with the shredded cheese, sprinkle with a tiny bit more salt and pepper.

Place ramekins on a baking sheet (in case they bubble over) and bake for 20-25 minutes. Let cool a bit and serve, careful kids – those ramekins are hot!

Sure, this meal is cuter because of the Hello Kitty pasta, but you can use any shape and it’s still a fun dinner for the kids. As for the dino shaped garlic bread, yeah – there’s no changing that. It’s a must.