Valentine's Day Cake 2013

There is a little wishful thinking in the title of this post because I am hoping that in the future I will be able to make more Valentine's Day cakes in the future :) I was very lucky to receive an e-mail from my dads cousin asking me to make a heart shaped Valentine's Day cake for his wife. He is such a romantic and wanted to have something special for his wife of many years. I had a lot to live up to since last year he had a singing quartet come to her work and serenade her. This was going to have to be one delicious cake! He asked for a few things; a dozen roses on the cake, white icing, and it to have one simple and beautiful statement on it (you will be able to see that in the pictures to follow). I melted a little bit with the requests he make because I could see how loving this couple was by reading the e-mails. We made our arrangements and I got to work!

I started out by making the cake in a heart shaped pan. I made a vanilla cake with some cranberry/grape juice. After the cake cooled I covered it in homemade buttercream (my specialty if you have not noticed from all of my other posts). While icing the cake I used a new technique I had heard of many times before to make the cakes smooth but I had not tried before. By making the spatula super hot and icing it I can make the icing crazy smooth! It was so much fun. I plan on working with my icing in that way more often. I definitely need to practice more to perfect it as well.

For the next half an hour I was able to make roses out of fondant. I found an incredible video online showing me how to make fondant roses very simply and beautifully. This was my first time making flowers out of fondant so I was pretty excited to try it. By placing small balls of fondant between two layers of wax paper (or parchment paper-which I may use next time) I was able to press out the fondant around the edges to make petals. Afterwards all I had to do was wrap each one around the other. I made one dozen roses of different sizes, all in red of course. I next made a few green leaves by forming little balls of fondant and then making them into a triangle shape. I used a toothpick to make the veins on the leaves. Finally I put everything together! By placing all of the roses at the top corner I was able to make room to write the special message at the bottom. I attached all of the leaves and made some vines as well. I thought it would be nice to write the message in green to match the leaves and vines. He wanted me to write something important to his wife, that he made up, "Once again I give you my heart." After the delivery I received another e-mail from him letting me know that his wife loved the cake and ate a few pieces. I felt so honored to be a part of their special day. Enjoy, and let me know what you think!