Happy Valentine's Day!

I don’t celebrate Valentine’s Day. It’s too commercialized for me, or so I tell myself that ;)

I do always like a good opportunity (excuse) for baking/crafting though, so I made this heart shape red velvet cake for Valentine’s Day. My original plan was to decorate the cake with piping some shell shaped icings on, but I realized the cream cheese frosting is too soft because I didn’t put A LOT of powdered sugar in it (I don’t like things too sweet). So I came up with this crumbled cake decoration which worked out great for me.

ANYWAY—Happy Valentine’s Day to all <3

<recipe provided made 2 heart shaped red velvet cakes>

Red Velvet Cake Recipe

from How Sweet It Is

Ingredients 

·     3/4 cup shortening (I used butter because I didn’t have shortening)

·     2 1/2 cups sugar

·     3 eggs

·     3 tablespoon cocoa

·     3 tablespoon red food coloring (I used about ½-3/4 teaspoon gel paste food coloring)

·     3 cups cake flour

·     1/2 teaspoon salt

·     1 1/2 cup buttermilk

·     1 1/3 teaspoon vanilla

·     1 1/2 tablespoon vinegar

·     1 1/2 teaspoon baking soda

Directions

1.   Preheat oven to 350. Line cake pan with parchment paper (I used my 2 8*8 square cake pan).

2.   Cream shortening and sugar. Add eggs. Slowly add cocoa and food coloring. Soft together cake flour and salt. Add flour mixture alternately with buttermilk beginning and ending with flour. Add in vanilla and beat for 2 minutes.

3.   Mix baking soda and vinegar together. Add and stir until combined.

4.   Bake for 30 minutes. 

Cream Cheese Frosting Recipe

Ingredients 

·    20 ounce cream cheese, softened (I used 1/3 less fat)

·    3 tablespoon butter, softened

·    1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

·    1 cup powdered sugar, sifted

Directions

1.   Cream cream cheese and butter.

2.   Beat in vanilla extract till combined. Add the sifted powdered sugar to the mixture slower and beat the frosting till combined and smooth.

Cake Assembly

1.   Level the cake: chop off the heaping part of the cake horizontally.

2.   Carve the cake into a heart shape and slice horizontally so that there are two thinner pieces of the cake.

3.   Cover the bottom piece of cake with frosting, then stick the top piece on. Cover the whole cake with frosting (around and the top part). Crumble the extra cake pieces as decoration and put it around the cake.  

4.   Let the cake chill in the freezer for 30 minutes then add another layer of frosting to the top part of the cake. Doing this will allow the last layer of the frosting to cover any cake crumbles that gets into the icing (i.e. so the top part of the cake looks cleaner/prettier). Decorate the little heart shape with the rest of the crumbled cake with care. I used a knife to draw an outline of the heart shape on the frosting and just carefully press the cake crumbs onto the cake.

Enjoy it with a cup of tea!
-Jamie