Heart Cake

Wow, it's been THREE whole weeks since I last updated! I'm SO sorry. I hope my loyal readers haven't abandoned me! I've been super busy here in Cali and the whole experience has been quite taxing. (har har, pun intended!) I've been bogged down by work and haven't had a free moment to breathe. I haven't spouted this many pimples on my face since my pre-teen years! lol. But anyway, I'm happy to report that all in all, I've been having a great time and loving every moment of my busy new job!

Anyway, I made this amazing disaster- oh, I mean... CAKE a couple of months ago, before leaving Seattle.

Can you tell what it is? It's a cake! With a heart in it!

I first stumbled across the idea on i am baker. The author of this blog is amazing! I was in utter shock and awe when I saw it. I can't even imagine the number of hours it must have taken her to figure it out! Pure genius!

She's posted recipes and a step by step tutorial in two separate entries. Please see her posts for really good instructions and waaaay better photos!

Click Here for the recipes
Click Here for the tutorials

It seemed utterly complicated, which of course, meant that I had to attempt it. It was instantly bumped up to number one on my To-Try list. Even if I failed, it was at least worth documenting! =)

Since I knew that this was most likely going to end in disaster, I wasn't willing to bake a gi-normous amount of cake from scratch. So I went against my always-bake-from-scratch philosophy and grabbed a few boxes of cake mix from the store. *gasp* I know I know, shame on me. tee hee.


But in my defense: I wasn't going to feed it to anyone- this was purely for experimental purposes! Justification validated. Now let's move on.


First, the red velvet cake: I baked it in a regular 13x9 pan because you're just going to mush it up anyway.


When it was done baking, I allowed it to cool, then crumbled it up and transferred it into a mixing bowl.


Now, you'll need to whip up a batch of American buttercream. Yeah, that's right. The kind that crusts. I usually don't use this because I dislike the taste and the way it crusts. But since this is what the recipe called for and it's more of a "looker" cake than a "tastes good" cake, I went with it.

Now, combine the butter cream with the red velvet crumbs.


Do a little bit at a time, until everything is well combined.

Then I dumped everything back into the 13x9 pan and then refrigerated it over night. Make sure to cover it really well.

And now, moving on to the round vanilla cakes!


Ok, here's my problem: the recipe called for 8 inch rounds. But I only had 9 inch pans. I knew that this was going to give me a shorter cake to work with, so I had my fingers crossed that it wasn't going to be too big of a deal when I went to carve it.

I baked four 9-inch rounds and leveled the tops off.

At this point, you want to ice two layers together. Meaning, spread a middle layer of icing between two layers, and possibly a little on the sides and top if you want to do a crumb coating.


In this picture, I'm showing the two sets of iced layers that I placed on top of each other for refrigerating over night. Notice how the very middle layer isn't iced together. I did it this way to save room in my fridge. It was hard to create enough space for two separate sets of 9 inch rounds AND my 13x9 red velvet. So I consolidated by stacking them. But please don't get confused and ice all four layer together! You'll have to separate the two sets the next day when you go to carve them.

Ok, onto day two. Take one set of your 9 inch round and begin carving the bottom of the heart.

She says to do this by taking a toothpick and tying a ribbon between them. This will allow you to draw an even circumference around the cake, so that you'll know where to carve.


The bottom wasn't so hard to do. Except, since I did 9 inch rounds, I felt like my "cone shape" was a little bit too flat. Perhaps I should have made a smaller heart, but I didn't think of it until afterward. Why is everything so much simpler in retrospect??


Next, carve out the top of the heart. This is WAY harder to do. You need a little inverted ice cream cone shape, in the middle of your big ice cream cone. Confused? I was too! See i am baker's blog for this step. She has better pictures and what she did was waaay more precise. =)

This was as close to a cone shape as I could get it. =/


You'll have lots of scraps left over!


Now, fill in the cake with red velvet!

Do it for both halves. Make sure you remember which half is which! Refrigerate both halves or put it in the freezer for a while. This will make it easier to flip the top half onto the bottom.

After you assemble the two halves, frost the entire cake.

I wasn't feeling particularly creative, so I just dumped the rest of the red velvet on top, like how it was featured on i am baker.

Ok, so when I sliced it open, it wasn't as beautiful as I had hoped. =/ But I was still pretty darn happy that you can at least tell what shape it's supposed to be. Baby steps, right? Not bad for a first attempt, I decided!

The piece that I cut out looked pretty good though! I think it's the slight slant of the slice that makes the heart shape more defined.

YEssss! An overall success, I'd say!

Ok, I don't mean to end this entry abruptly, but it's late and I'm really tired. I gotta rest up for another grueling day of tax law. =)

And I promise that it won't be another three weeks before I blog again!