If I ever need audition photos to submit to the Netflix show Nailed It, I think I've got them right here. So this was my first attempt at making a shaped cake, something I need practice with because I'm going to make my daughter a Buzz Lightyear spaceship cake for her birthday next month.
Insert horror here.
I'm not trying to impress anyone. It is just a small family birthday. But my daughter told me she wanted a Buzz Lightyear cake, so dang it, that's what she's getting. And if you know me, you know I'm always up for a fun themed cake. (See panda birthday cake and puppy dog paw print cupcakes.)
To get me into the right mindset, I decided to make a heart-shaped cake for Valentine's Day based on something I saw on Pinterest. It looked easy! Just bake a circle cake and a square cake, cut the circle in half, and use frosting to attach the halves to the top of the square, which is placed at a diagonal.
To make things even easier for me, I bought two boxes of Betty Crocker gluten-free Devil's Food cake mix and a container of pre-made gluten-free pink frosting. (My daughter said she wanted the cherry flavor. Oh boy. It's grenadine in a container of frosting.)
The cakes turned out great! I let them cool off A LOT before I attempted frosting them. Here's what I've learned:
1. A cut cake is hard to frost. I kept getting bits of cake pieces stuck in the frosting.
2. I need a larger work space. I decided to put the cake on a cake tray because the tray has a cover to keep the cake fresh. But the cake tray was a little small when the square and circle cakes were put together. I even tried cutting the circle halves down a smidge. (And you know what you can do with the leftover cake cuttings? Cake pops!)
3. Maybe use an 8x8 square pan and an 8-inch circle pan instead of what I did: 8x8 square pan and 9-inch circle pan. My circle halves were a little out of proportion for the square.
But all in all, it looked like a heart. (My daughter said it was a square. What does she know? She's only almost 3.)
And in the end, we cut into it to eat it, thereby ruining the shape, and it was DELICIOUS. So that's all that really matters.
Happy Valentine's Day!
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