Easy Valentines Cake
Easy to make and decorate cake recipe
Servings: 16 squares
Ingredients
Cake Layer
- 220 g all purpose flour 1.5 cups
- 5 g salt 3/4 tsp
- 8 g baking powder 1 3/4 tsp
- 320 g granulated sugar 1.5 cups
- 2 oz butter, softened 1/4 cup
- 2 eggs, room temp
- 200 g buttermilk, room temp or slightly warm 1 1/4 cups
- 8 g vanilla extract or flavor of choice 2 tsp
Buttercream
- 6 oz butter, room temp 3/4 cups (1.5 sticks)
- 1 pinch salt 1/8 tsp
- 8 oz confectioners sugar 2 1/4 cups
- 10 g heavy cream or milk 2 tsp
- 4 g Almond extract or flavor of choice 1 tsp
- 4 drops divided pink gel color optional
Garnish
- Maraschino cherries optional
- sprinkles optional
Instructions
To Make the Cake Layer
- Preheat your oven to 330 degrees.
- In a bowl combine buttermilk, vanilla extract, and room temp eggs. Mix to break up the eggs and combine.
- Add flour, salt, baking powder, and sugar to the bowl of your mixer.
- Add the softened butter and mix with your paddle attachment on the lowest setting on your stand mixer until it looks like coarse sand, about 1 minute.
- With your mixer on low, add around half of your wet ingredients. You really just want to add enough liquid so that everything is a little wet without forming a dough texture, it should resemble cake batter. Then turn it to medium and let it mix for 2 minutes. Set a timer and do not go over. This helps develop the structure of the cake, without over mixing.
- Scrape your bowl after the 2 minutes. With your mixer on low add the rest of your wet ingredients. Mix just until totally combined. About 15 seconds.
- Prepare your pan by spraying the sides and lining the bottom with parchment paper.
- Pour all of the batter into the pan and smooth the batter so it’s flat in the pan, then cover with aluminum foil.
- Bake until done about 55 min. When the cake is done the sides will start to slightly pull away from the pan and a toothpick inserted in the center will come out clean.
- Place on cooling rack, carefully remove foil.
- Let the cake cool for about 15 min or until the pan is cool enough to touch and remove it from the pan to cool completely.
For the Buttercream
- Put the softened butter in the bowl of your mixer. Fit the mixer with your paddle attachment.
- Beat the butter on medium for 2-3 minutes until it's smooth and lighter in color.
- With the mixer on low add the flavored extract and salt.
- Turn off the mixer and add the powdered sugar. Slowly let that start incorporating. I prefer to turn the mixer on and off because of the dust cloud it creates. Once it's not making a lot of dust I turn it on to the lowest setting.
- Add the cream and let the mixture run for a few minutes until well combined and smooth. Cover the mixture while not using.
- You can add a drop of pink gel coloring to the whole batch now if you want it colored, then remove 1/2 cup and add an additional 3 drops to that for the heart decorations if desired.
To Assemble
- Trim any brown edges off the cake layer. This just makes presentation nicer.
- Place the cake on what you're going to serve it on, I chose a cake pedestal.
- Evenly spread buttercream on the top of the cake. An offset spatula is best for this. No need to be perfect here.
- To make the buttercream hearts fit a piping bag with a French tip and fill the bag with your buttercream. Slightly roll your tip forward while giving the bag some pressure to create the top of the heart and pull back and release at the bottom of the heart. Repeat on the other side.
- Then you can garnish it with whatever other decorations you like, I recommend maraschino cherries and sprinkles.