The 14th February, that time of year again, Valentines Day. How could I not make this themes bake inspired by Valentines, especially when I’ve planned this one in my head for so long. I made a promise to myself that this year I would try some new things when I came to baking, and as pushed by Despina that’s exactly what I did. I worked with fondant, something I like to avoid where possible. For this cake to work I wanted to do something different, although it may not look the best cake, for me it represents me trying something new and not giving up.
A traditional sweet for Valentines has to be Love Hearts, with the nice little messages on each sweet. I thought why not try and make a larger one but in cake. Of course for this cake I didn’t have any heart tins, so I just had to buy some heart tins. I talked myself out of using fondant so much but in the end, what could’ve gone wrong, I was going to blog about it regardless. Before I get into this years bake, I can’t believe it’s been a year since I made white chocolate and raspberry cupcakes as seen below. They were such a spontaneous bake last year but perfect for Valentines. So this year, I wanted to challenge myself. I made a nice simple cake mixture up 175g of butter, self-raising flour, caster sugar, 3 eggs and 1 teaspoon of baking powder. I went with a nice simple vanilla flavouring didn’t want to make life difficult when I was already going to a next step using fondant. I bought two cake tins not bigger than 20cm in length. One mixture was enough to fill 4 tins. I had preheated the oven to 175 degrees, unlike cupcakes the baking time was longer. It took around 20 minutes for them to bake, I used to first 2 cakes as a tester to judge the time. Once the toothpick came out clean I knew they were done. I left the cakes to cool for about half an hour, it was pointless rushing and starting to decorated them to early because the decorating would’ve just gone wrong.
The cakes themselves, were already pretty level so there was no need for them to be cut. It was annoying because I was having a proper stress trying to get them out of the tins because some of the edges got stuck to the tin, but nothing a bit of buttercream couldn’t fix. I sandwiched the two cakes together with some strawberry jam. I then covered the cake in some rhubarb flavoured buttercream. If you want to find out how I made this buttercream read the blog ‘A twist on a classic’, a really easy and tasty thing to whip up. I tried to smooth the buttercream until there was a smooth coat all the way around. Then the fun began because it was time to add the pink fondant. This required help from Despina, I actually lost track of how long we spent trying to get this to work. I added some icing sugar to the bench and then rolled it out so it wasn’t thick and that it was rolled out enough to cover the heart. It was frustrating because one section would keep getting stuck to the table, I think we must’ve rolled it out over 5 times. At the time it was stressful once it was finally rolled out, to get it on the cake. Once it was on the cake, I smoothed it out as best I could and then, the excess was cut away. Then we had one covered heart cake, a step that I was so nearly willing to give up on at one point. Why stop there though? The intention had always been to make it into a giant love heart. Ironically writing on the cake was probably one of the hardest jobs, I’d had it pinned as one of the easiest. Despina chose ‘Be Mine’ to be written on the cake. We sat and practiced writing out the letters individually before we committed to piping onto the cake, I responsible for the E’s and Despina did the rest. By pure chance I happened to have some Love heart sweets in my room, I think they definitely finished the cake off.
Even after we finished I wasn’t satisfied with how it came out, mainly because it was so difficult to get a good photo of the cake. I also think it was because it didn’t turn out how I imagined it too, which is ok because, I’m certainly classing this cake as a learning curve. This cake was certainly outside of my comfort zone. I hope you learnt something from this cake just like I did. I hope you improved skills on perseverance and not giving up. I hoped you spent Valentines with someone you loved and appreciated, on the other hand I hope you spent Galentines with someone special. Stayed tuned for next weeks wonderful creation.
Lots of Love
Hannah x
Amazing cake. I like fondant covered cakes so save me some