pink heart cake.

Happy Cougar Town is back day!  ...I mean, Happy Pink Day!  ...I mean, Happy Valentine's Day!  No but, seriously, Cougar Town is back today (after an excruciating nine month hiatus) at 8:30 EST/PST on ABC.  Please, please watch!  I don't want to lose this show.  I promise it's a good & hilarious show that has nothing to do with it's title.

It's also Valentine's Day, and I have a little something I'd like to share.  At the beginning of this year we lost my Grandpa (horrible way to start out 2012) and since his passing my Grammy has been understandably depressed.  They were together for over 50 years, had 4 kids, and numerous grandchildren.  All of the sudden, her husband is gone, and she's alone in the house.  My family is lucky enough to live within an hour of where she does, so we've all been making many visits to her - not to mention phone calls - to ensure that she does not feel alone.  The first holiday she has had to spend without him is today, Valentine's Day, and I wanted to make sure that she did not feel alone because she certainly is not.  She has a lot of love surrounding her from all of us.  It was a terrible tragedy but it is true that a heartbreak like that brings a family closer together, there is something magical about how we all rallied around her and showered her with so much love.

I've mentioned my love of baking here before and felt that there literally was no better way for me to show my Grammy how much I love her than to bake her a cake.  And bake her a cake I did!

It took me a few days so settle on what exactly I was going to make for her, I really couldn't decide.  It was only after a conversation with my mom that I figured out what I was going to do.  I decided to make a red velvet & vanilla swirled cake into the shape of a heart and frost it with pink butter cream.  Yum!

 

I first made the red velvet and vanilla cake batters, then poured half of the red velvet into square baking pan & the other half into the circle.  I repeated the same with the vanilla cake batter.  Then took a knife & swirled them together, baked them, and got the picture above!  I thought it looked pretty cool.

Next I simply the the circle in half, twisted the square so that it looked like a diamond & put the two halves of the circle on the left & right side to form a heart.

Making some vanilla buttercream and tinting it pink was next.  This is frosting was completely delicious.  I ended up adding almost an entire cup less of powdered sugar than the recipe said to and it was still pretty sweet.  I used my AmeriColor Fuchsia gel food coloring, only ended up using a little bit, and got a really gorgeous color that I was extremely happy with.

This was the finished product, after I brought it to my Grammy's house!  She loved it and I was so happy.  I only wish I had something a little prettier to transport it on that foil wrap on a cookie sheet from Ikea, lol.

Here's a little of the inside, after we had a piece.  Okay...a few pieces. ;)  It tasted so good, I was a little worried that the swirling somehow would mess up the batters but it didn't.  Yay!  The vanilla cake and the red velvet went perfectly together, neither over powered the other, they married together really well.  And the frosting was super delicious too - not too much so that cake really got to shine.

Here's the recipes that I used. . .

Quick Vanilla Buttercream Frosting from Food Network
  * I used 2 cups powdered sugar instead of 3
  * Probably a little more vanilla extract than a teaspoon
  * 1 tablespoon whole milk instead of 2 tablespoons whipping cream

AmeriColor Gel Food Coloring

Golden Vanilla Cake from King Arthur Flour
  * I'm in a constant search of a great yellow cake and this one was really, really good but I don't think I found my great recipe yet.  It worked perfectly swirled with the red velvet but on it's own I don't think it'd be sweet enough, unless paired with a really fudgy chocolate frosting.

I used a red velvet cake mix due to lack of time and cocoa power but I would suggest using this Red Velvet Cake recipe or the one out of her cookbook (The Pioneer Woman Cooks), they're delicious!

Happy Valentine's Day y'all!

xx Meg