Just Baking

This past weekend we were invited over to my Sister’s house to have dinner. When thinking about what to bring I offered for us to bring over some dessert. I thought it’d be a nice challenge for Steph as she is almost finished with her second cake decorating class. On Saturday morning we were kicking around different ideas when we came up with the idea of making a heart cake. One of Steph’s friends at work gave her this recipe for a Red Velvet cake from Woman’s day. Red Velvet cake?? The only time I’ve seen something like that was in that “Fried Green Tomatoes” movie (Bleeding Armadillo anyone?)…we liked the recipe, but thought that ’sprinkling with rose petals’ wasn’t going to work for us. See, not only were we seeing my sister but her husbands two children (5th and 8th grade)…so we thought it’d be fun to make something a bit more fun. Coming back from the store we had a TON of butter, cream cheese and sugar.

Seriously, I have no idea what the heck the clerks were thinking when we checked out…maybe thought we were starting Valentines day early or something! *laugh* Using our kitchenaid the batter came together pretty quick…VERY silkay

Of course, that was before the red was added. Now, the big question (at least to me) was how to get the batter even between the two cake pans. How ’bout measuring them by weight??

This is why Steph has some major cake making skillz, and the reason I stay outta the kitchen when she’s bakin’ Into the oven the cakes went and what came out were too beautiful

Now, here comes my contribution. I had thought it would be fun to have some hearts on top of the cake that would look a little like Necco hearts. Necco’s are my favorite Valentines day candy and are originated here in Boston Problem was…how do we make the coolio heart on top. Inspiration came from that naughtay, damn talented guy Duff from Charm City Cakes. Duff uses Rice Crispy treats to make interesting molds so I thought we could do the same!

Steph has a ton of cookay cutters which we used to cut out the hearts out of the rice crispay treats.

Finishing off the hearts we frosted them. Can you tell which hearts I frosted and which ones Steph did?? hehe Much of the competition chefs use fondant as their frosting, but we went with a buttercream. Not quite as smooth as fondant, but the hearts came out pretty good!

We decided to put some necco hearts around the edge of the cake. This cake presented a challenge in the cream cheese frosting. It didn’t smooth out like buttercream and was a bit more textured than what she probably would like. Steph then decided to make some pink frosting and line the top and bottom of the cake.

What came out was a super tasty cake! The rice crispy treats were really fun as large hearts. The cream cheese frosting added a nice tart compliment to the very interesting flavor of the red velvet cake. Given Steph’s quest for the perfect cake, she probably would’ve like to have made this with buttercream to have the ultimate in smooth texture. Personally, all I know was that the cake was beautiful and super fun to look at. I would totally recommend making this cake if you have some small helpers that love helping with left over rice crispy treats

FINISHED!!!