valentine's day
this year's valentine's day effort
I shall call it Strawberry Heart Cake. Literally, it's a vanilla victoria sponge cake with strawberry frosting [buttercream with strawberry preserves added] and chocolate strawberry filling [dark chocolate sauce with strawberry preserves added] and some kirsch basted on for a bit of fun.
I used some of the chocolate filling to make the heart shape on top. And when that didn't quite work out, looking a little too blobby to my critical eye, I traced the outline of the heart using the cut up strawberries.
I think I maybe should've spread the chocolate sauce out closer to the rim of the cake, but I was worried about it squishing out the sides and messing up the buttercream, so I was conservative. Anywhoodle, it seems to have worked out okay.
Recipe
Cake
This is a six-inch cake so I actually used a cupcake recipe rather than scaling down a recipe for a larger cake. I only have one six-inch cake pan so I divided the ingredients in half and mixed one batch at a time to make a two-layer cake. Here are the ingredients for one layer.
115g [about one stick] butter
115g sugar
2 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla
115g flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/8 tsp salt
Cream together the butter and sugar. [If you're like me, you'll use the butter wrapper to prep the baking pan, and then spritz it with Baker's Joy anyway.] Add eggs to the butter/sugar mixture, one at a time, beating between additions. Add vanilla.
Sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt. Fold dry ingredients into the butter/sugar/eggs mixture.
Scrape the batter into a six-inch pan. Bake at 350 for 20-30 minutes.
Frosting
The frosting is adapted from, or inspired by, the raspberry buttercream frosting recipe in Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World. The recipe provided just enough frosting for the outside of the cake.
1 stick butter
2 cups confectioner's sugar
2 or 3 tablespoons of strawberry preserves
Cream the butter and confectioner's sugar together until the mixture is smooth. Add the strawberry preserves a spoonful at a time until the frosting has a spreadable consistency [and a pleasing flavor!].
Filling
I just happened to have some dark fudgey chocolate sauce lying around, so mixed that with some more of the strawberry preserves and used it as a filling. It just isn't Valentine's Day without chocolate.
Official BBB entry here
This entry was originally posted at http://stuberyl.dreamwidth.org/312093.html. Feel free to comment here or there (but not everywhere).
I shall call it Strawberry Heart Cake. Literally, it's a vanilla victoria sponge cake with strawberry frosting [buttercream with strawberry preserves added] and chocolate strawberry filling [dark chocolate sauce with strawberry preserves added] and some kirsch basted on for a bit of fun.
I used some of the chocolate filling to make the heart shape on top. And when that didn't quite work out, looking a little too blobby to my critical eye, I traced the outline of the heart using the cut up strawberries.
I think I maybe should've spread the chocolate sauce out closer to the rim of the cake, but I was worried about it squishing out the sides and messing up the buttercream, so I was conservative. Anywhoodle, it seems to have worked out okay.
Recipe
Cake
This is a six-inch cake so I actually used a cupcake recipe rather than scaling down a recipe for a larger cake. I only have one six-inch cake pan so I divided the ingredients in half and mixed one batch at a time to make a two-layer cake. Here are the ingredients for one layer.
115g [about one stick] butter
115g sugar
2 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla
115g flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/8 tsp salt
Cream together the butter and sugar. [If you're like me, you'll use the butter wrapper to prep the baking pan, and then spritz it with Baker's Joy anyway.] Add eggs to the butter/sugar mixture, one at a time, beating between additions. Add vanilla.
Sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt. Fold dry ingredients into the butter/sugar/eggs mixture.
Scrape the batter into a six-inch pan. Bake at 350 for 20-30 minutes.
Frosting
The frosting is adapted from, or inspired by, the raspberry buttercream frosting recipe in Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World. The recipe provided just enough frosting for the outside of the cake.
1 stick butter
2 cups confectioner's sugar
2 or 3 tablespoons of strawberry preserves
Cream the butter and confectioner's sugar together until the mixture is smooth. Add the strawberry preserves a spoonful at a time until the frosting has a spreadable consistency [and a pleasing flavor!].
Filling
I just happened to have some dark fudgey chocolate sauce lying around, so mixed that with some more of the strawberry preserves and used it as a filling. It just isn't Valentine's Day without chocolate.
Official BBB entry here
This entry was originally posted at http://stuberyl.dreamwidth.org/312093.html. Feel free to comment here or there (but not everywhere).