Valentine's Day Cake

 Winter is awesome. Besides the truly terrible weather, were granted with: 

a good two or three months of celebrations like Thanksgiving, Hannukah, Christmas, New Years...

school break and friends coming back from college

the chance to bring out our cute boots and beanies again :)

But what happens after? February slowly creeps up on us and BAM -- suddenly its Valentine's Day. No, I'm not going to go on a rampage complaining about this holiday like you're probably expecting now. Truth be told, I think Valentine's Day is actually quite adorable and it gives me an excuse to spend a night with friends, make dinner together, and share a good two or seven bottles of wine...

But this year I love Valentine's Day just about 100x times more because it's the perfect opportunity to bake pretty pink and red desserts all week long and excuse myself by simply saying ... hey, its for Valentine's Day.

I decided to get in the holiday spirit a bit early this week. My lovely Saturday morning was spent baking a 4-layer red velvet cake topped with vanilla frosting and covered in a smooth layer of fondant - all made to perfection by moi, if I may so myself.

Making the cake from scratch left me incredibly nervous for its results and led to me searching the web for a good two hours until I found the perfect recipe. I usually trust websites like Martha Stewart, Cupcakes and Cashmere, or Smitten Kitchen (whos currently featuring a killer Salted Caramel Brownie recipe that I'm dying to try). But ,when I found this "Sprinkles copy-cat recipe", I felt pretty safe. I frosted the cake with this vanilla frosting recipe by Martha Stewart but found it okay so I'm still looking for a better recipe out there.

- And thats only the half of it -

Now for the fondant. This stuff is very scary. I still don't fully understand how it looks so perfect when other bakers use it, but I'm on a mission! Instead of buying a store bought one ($9 for a box of sugar is a tad bit annoying if you ask me), I opted to make my own using this recipe which worked out really well and is surprisingly very easy to follow. I made it two days before and kept it in an air tight container which kept it pretty soft, but it would be better to make day of in the morning just so its easier to deal with and tastes more fresh.






I love how the cake turned out with the huge red bow on top and the mini red hearts all over -- I dont think I've made a cake this popular amongst my friends and family. I do wish that I got the chance to slice into it and see how it turned out on the inside, but taking it to PATH this week was once again a great experience. Shanee wasn't working when I stopped by late that evening, but I did drop the cake off with a man (who I didn't catch the name of) and a woman named Danita, a tenant of PATH. She had the prettiest blue eyes and was incredibly sweet -- and to top it all off, when I dropped off the cake she asked for my number incase I'd be able to do a cake for an event coming up soon! She asked me if I had a business card (which I'm now in the process of making) and pretty much made my day. I hope they enjoyed the cake and I'll definitely be looking forward to running into Danita again.


Now, I'm going to spend the rest of my evening buried in Williams-Sonoma cookbooks and online baking blogs until I find the perfect vanilla frosting recipe. Until I get a few hours in to bake, the vision of these beauties will simply have to do...

- STUNNING - 

dying for a bite!