Valentine's Cake

I've decided that I would really like to hire a baker.  This cake decided to really test my skills. 

I was asked to teach a fondant class and since it's so close to Valentine's Day, I decided with this cake.  I am always making chocolate cakes and figured I would branch out and try a homemade red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting. 

Day #1:  cake prep

I had to babysit yesterday (in addition to taking care of my 2 year old) and the only time I had to bake this cake was during naptime.  Rush, rush, rush....

I mixed all the ingredients and while I was doing so heard one of the little ones starting to wake up.  I quickly finished, threw it into the oven and by that time all was quiet again so I started washing dishes.  All of a sudden, I realized that I had left out the cocoa!  Ahhhhh!!!  I ripped the cakes out of the oven (8 minutes into cooking), hoping that I could somehow salvage the cake.  Luckily, not much had cooked except for the very bottom.  I poured the batter back into the now clean mixing bowl, added the cocoa and had to prepare the cake pans all over again.  Save number one...

Later that afternoon, after letting them cool, it was time to get them out of the pans.  Layer number 1 cracked a little bit, but I was able to piece the small piece back in...no problem.  Layer number 2 on the other hand was a disaster!  The whole bottom of the cake (about 1/2 inch) decided to stick to the pan.  Oh no!!!  This is where save number 2 comes in....I had to scrape the whole bottom out real careful and flip it over onto the piece that was already out.  Not an easy task!  Now it was time to put the two layers together.  Somehow I managed to get them lined on top of each other okay, but you could really see a nice crack around the bottom layer all the way around.  At this point, I had to decide if I still wanted to attempt carving out a heart shape and possibly causing more damage.  Well, I decided to go for it...you never know unless you try right?!  I cut out a heart shape from wax paper and placed it over the cake to used as a guide.  It turned out quite well considering it could have fallen apart even more.  Now it was time to really put my icing skills to the test.  I had to fill in quite a bit of breaks with the frosting, but the above picture shows how it turned out after the crumb coat....not too shabby considering the mess it was in.  I was very proud of myself for fixing what could have been a major cake disaster. 

Day #2: cake class

We had a really nice class and this was a good chance for me to try out placing fondant over a heart shaped cake.  It was a lot easier than I was expecting...a nice change to the day before! 



This was my second bow like this and I'm starting to get much faster with it.  This picture shows how I put the bits of paper towel in the bow loops to hold them in place for drying. The flowers were really quite simple.  I used a flower cutout and then carved grooves into the petals. 

I wasn't sure how I wanted to finish the bottom and I didn't have much room to play with, so I just used a very thin rope around it.  Tomorrows the day we find out if it tastes as yummy as it looks!!

Day #3:  Taste test!

Today we finally got to taste the cake!  I can't say I would trade in my chocolate cake for this, but it was definitely yummy!  It looked really pretty too!

I even decided to try making some cake pops with the leftover cake tops that were cut off the cake.  Check them out here, http://cakesbynicola.blogspot.com/2011/02/my-first-cake-pops.html