The Hello Kitty Cake

I've had a few people ask me how I made this cake, so I thought that while Danica is napping today, I would write it out.

There's not really a whole lot to tell...I did everything the "simple" way to avoid any cake wrecks like I've had in the past :)

I started with a home made chocolate cake. It's a recipe I got from my mother in law, and it seriously NEVER fails for me. She started making it because it's eggless ( sis in law is allergic), and it just kind of stuck as THE CAKE.
Would anyone like the recipe posted? Ok, you can't answer, so maybe I'll post it just in case your answer is yes :)

But first, Hello Kitty. I baked the cake in two tin pie plates. After they were cooked, cooled, and taken out of the pans, I used a paring knife to straighten the edges.

I iced the cake with a simple buttercream icing, making sure to ice in between the layers before I stacked it.

Then, I used marshmallow fondant. I have always shied away from making it, because it just seemed difficult. Of course, I made that judgement without even reading the recipe, which was super bright of me. Once I finally decided to read the recipe, I kicked myself for never trying it before. It's easy, has a cool texture, and tastes delicious!

To make it, I greased a microwave safe bowl, dumped about a third of a bag of marshmallows in, and put it in the microwave for 20 seconds. Stir, then put in for 10 second intervals until the marshmallows are JUST melty enough to stir together.

I took it out, added some vanilla and red food coloring (to make it pink), and stirred that all together

Then I dumped some icing sugar in! Just a little at a time so it was easy to mix in. It was sticky! After it got too thick to stir with the spoon, I dumped it onto the icing sugar covered counter top and kept mixing with my hands. It was even stickier! I got a phone call part way through and had that panicky moment..."do I try to answer with the non-marshmallow covered part of my hand, or make them think I'm ignoring them?" I answered it :)
Anyway, after a few minutes of working the icing sugar in, adding more as I went, I had marshmallow fondant!

I broke off a piece for Myka to play with so she would leave the big cake alone, and got to work.
I rolled out the fondant into a huge circle, then carefully laid it over the cake and trimmed around the bottom. To "finish" the look of the edges, I rolled some of the extra fondant into a long snake twist to wrap around the base of the cake.

For the Hello Kitty face, my plan was to print off a picture to use as a template for cutting out the fondant. The printed picture (on card stock), looked so good that my mom suggested just using it! So, I experimented, using a few drops of water to stick it to the fondant and voila! It looked perfect (to me, anyway!) and saved me like, half an hour of messing with fondant :)

I used some cookie cutters to cut out the flowers, then painted a couple of them with red food colouring to change the shade a bit.

I used the extra buttercream to write "Myka", and the cake was done!

Now, the Eggless Chocolate Cake:

Preheat the oven to 350

3 cups flour
2 cups sugar
1/2 cup cocoa
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt

Stir those all together in a large bowl, then add:

3/4 cup oil (I've used 3/4 cup applesauce before and it also worked amazingly!)
2 tsp vinegar
2 tsp vanilla
2 cups water

Stir it all up, then pour it into a well greased 9x13 pan
Bake for 35-40 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

There ya go!