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Make this simple Hello Kitty chocolate cake with a stable buttercream and beginner-friendly decoration.

This recipe makes 1 Hello Kitty cake (16 servings).

Table of Contents

(click the links below to skip to the section you’re looking for)

• Vegan Cake Recipe
• Vegan Frosting Recipe
• Hello Kitty Cake Decor
• Questions and Answers
• Ingredient Substitutions
• Video
• Nutritional Information
• Contact Me with Questions
• Similar Recipes

I made this hello kitty chocolate birthday cake for my friend Kimmy. She’s obsessed with mermaids, so a hello kitty mermaid cake felt right.

How to Make a Hello Kitty Cake

Make a quarter sheet cake. If you want a vanilla cake, use my vegan vanilla cake recipe. If you like chocolate cake, and you’re short on time, this chocolate quarter sheet cake only takes 15 minutes to get into the oven.

How to Make Buttercream for a Hello Kitty Cake

I always start with a batch of white vegan buttercream, like this vegan almond buttercream frosting. For this cake, I replaced the almond extract with vanilla extract. I only ended up using about ⅔ of this frosting recipe for this cake, so if you’re good at math, you can make less. Or you can use the remainder on the cake scraps you cut off.

If you want this to be a soy-free cake, use soy-free earth balance for the vegan butter.

Ingredients needed for a DIY Hello Kitty Cake

(jump to the substitutions section to see ingredient details and suggestions for substitutions)

• pink food coloring
• ¼ cup (45g) vegan chocolate chips
• black cocoa powder or black food coloring

How to Decorate a Hello Kitty Cake with Buttercream

making the facial features: 7min | coloring the frosting: 5min | cutting out the cake: 10min | decorating the cake: 40min

Print or draw a picture of mermaid Hello Kitty. I drew my Hello Kitty because my printer is out of yellow ink. Apparently, when it’s out of one color, it won’t even let me print in black and white. So rude! Since I went through the effort of drawing mine, I will include the template below. That way, if you have a printer that likes you more than mine likes me, you can save some time.

hello kitty cake template - head

hello kitty mermaid cake template - body

Make melted chocolate for the eyes, nose, and whiskers. Melt ¼ cup (45g) of vegan chocolate chips using a double boiler or a microwave. I don’t have an actual double boiler. When I temper chocolate on the stove, I set a small metal bowl on a small saucepan with an inch of water in it. For this recipe, we don’t need the vegan chocolate to be tempered, so I set it for 30 seconds in the microwave. I stirred it once and put it back into the microwave for another 30 seconds. As soon as there are no more chocolate lumps when you stir it, it’s ready. Stir in some black cocoa powder or americolor black gel color to color the melted chocolate black. If you’re making a soy-free cake, see the substitutions section.

Draw the eyes, nose, and whiskers. Transfer the black melted chocolate to a Lékué deco pen if you have one. If you don’t, you can use compostable ziplock baggies and just cut a tiny hole out of the corner. Set the drawing of hello kitty’s face on a cutting board. Lay some acetate or parchment paper or a see-through silicone mat on top of it. Tape it down to keep it from moving if needed. If you use a silicone mat, you don’t need to tape it down. Trace the eyes, nose, and whiskers with the chocolate. Remove the tape, and slip the drawing out. Set the cutting board with the eyes, nose, and whiskers into the fridge or freezer to harden. If you’re making a soy-free cake, see the substitutions section.

Cut out the picture. If you use my template, you need to tape the head to the body. Then, cut out the picture of Hello Kitty. You’ll have to cut off half the whiskers, but that’s ok.

Lift the cake out of the pan. My cake lifted right out of the pan easily. If your cake is stuck in the pan, shimmy a silicone spatula around the sides of the lasagna pan to loosen it from the pan. Then grab the edges of the parchment paper to lift the cake. Put your hand under the cake to make sure it doesn’t break when you lift it out. Set it onto a cutting board.

Cut out the hello kitty shape on the cake. Set the paper on top of the cake and use a knife to cut around it. Once it’s cut out, remove the paper carefully. Some of the cake might stick to the paper. If you don’t want that to happen, you can always cut your hello kitty out from a piece of parchment paper and use that as your template instead of paper. I don’t mind losing a little bit of cake personally. It’s all covered with frosting eventually. Remove the edge pieces that aren’t part of the hello kitty cake design. I save them to eat later with the leftover frosting. Or you can make vegan truffles out of them.

Trim the parchment paper. This step is optional, but I trimmed the parchment paper just to make it easier. Getting excess parchment paper out of the way helped me frost the cake without parchment flaps getting in my way.

Frost the cake. I start with white frosting and cover the entire head and the arms and torso. I use an offset spatula for this step (to try to get it as smooth as possible). Don’t forget to do the sides of the cake as well. Chill the cake while you color the frosting.

Color the buttercream frosting. Divide the frosting into different bowls. Color one dark pink. Color one light pink. Color one light purple. If you want other colors, go crazy with it. For the pink and lavender colors, I used the EXBERRY powdered colors because they are all-natural and made with food ingredients. Gel colors, like the ones in my list of vegan food coloring, also work well in buttercream frostings.

Prepare for decorating with other colors. Fill 1 frosting bulbs fitted with Wilton round tip 4 (or a decopen) with the darker pink color of frosting. Fill another with the lighter pink color. If you don’t have these items, you can use a piping bag or a baggie.

Make Hello Kitty’s bow and shirt. Use the different shades of pink to trace, fill in, and smooth out the bow and shirt. I use a for details like this. Once the bow and shirt look good, chill the cake again.

Frost the mermaid tail. Assuming you’re making a mermaid hello kitty like I am, this is the funnest part! You have multiple options for how to decorate the tail. You can use the method I used when I made mermaid scale cupcakes. Or you can frost the entire tail all one color with an offset spatula. Then go back over it with a bulb to draw the scale loops on top. Don’t forget to frost the sides.

Transfer the cake to a permanent location. This step is optional. Right now, your hello kitty cake is on a piece of parchment paper that is on a cutting board, right? Well, that’s fine if you’re ok with it. For me, I often make cakes to bring to birthday parties. This is one of those instances. So, at this point, I transferred my cake to my cake carrier.

Add the nose, eyes, and whiskers. Once you’re happy with the cake, it’s time to add the facial features. You need to move quickly when you do this, especially if it’s warm in your house. The chocolate will try to melt the second you touch it. If you’re worried about that happening, you can use kitchen tweezers to transfer the chocolate onto the cake.

Add other finishing touches. If there’s anything else that would make your cake pop, add those now. I added some glitter to the mermaid tail for instance. Other options would be to add tiny white frosting dots to the eyes. Hello Kitty doesn’t usually have specular highlights in her eyes. But you’re the artist. You can make this cake whatever you want it to be.

Questions and Answers

What’s the easiest method to create Hello Kitty faces?

Hello Kitty’s face is just an oval with dots and whiskers. It’s a perfect cake for beginners because it’s simple, yet instantly recognizable.

Do I need special tools or can I just use common kitchen items?

This Hello Kitty cake tutorial is better than most because it uses everyday kitchen tools. A 9x13 baking pan, parchment paper, and a knife are for the cake. The facial features and bow can use a ziplock baggie.

What’s the simplest way to make Hello Kitty’s whiskers and bow?

For whiskers, I used black melted chocolate to draw them and place them on the cake when hardened. In the past, I’ve used black fondant rolled into thin strips. The bow is 2 shades of pink buttercream frosting.

Ingredient Substitutions

• Flour: Do you avoid gluten, or do you have friends or family who are gluten free? Substitute the all-purpose flour with a gluten-free flour blend to make a gluten-free Hello Kitty cake. Or you can also use my gluten-free chocolate cupcake batter recipe, but double it.
• Vegan Butter: If you’re soy-free, use a soy-free vegan butter like soy-free earth balance.
• Vegan Powdered Sugar: Use organic powdered sugar to make sure it’s vegan. Or check out my blog post about vegan powdered sugar for more info.
• Chocolate Chips: If you want a soy-free cake, buy soy-free vegan chocolate chips. The one I recommend is made by Enjoy Life. They’re widely available in the United States. In the UK, Pink Sun makes soy-free vegan chocolate chips that are sweetened with coconut sugar.

Video

Nutrition Facts

This nutritional information is for one serving of cake. I’m assuming that this cake recipe only uses half a batch of frosting.

• Servings: 16
• Calories: 472
• Fiber: 1g
• Saturated fat: 8g
• Total fat: 24g
• Cholesterol: 0mg
• Sodium: 231mg
• Sugars: 45g
• Total Carbohydrates: 62g
• Protein: 3g
• Calcium: 45mg
• Potassium: 49mg
• Iron: 2mg

Comments or Questions?

If you make this Hello Kitty shaped cake, I would love it if you’d snap a pic, post to instagram, and tag me @vegandollhouse. It seriously makes my day/week/month!

Please message me (instagram or email) if you have any questions or feedback about the recipe.

Similar Recipes

If you like this simple hello kitty cake, you might also like my pompompurin cake and my snorlax cake.

For other vegan Sanrio-themed food, I have a recipe for hello kitty peanut butter cookies with a chocolate filling. There’s also my chococat chocolate pie that’s like chocolate cream pie, but with added vegan nutella. And there are lots more in my vegan Sanrio recipes section.

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I mostly cook with organic ingredients, but only specify organic when it’s necessary to ensure the item is vegan.

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