Saturday, April 30, 2016

Heart Cake With Berries









My niece and I share a birthday week. We're the only two April babies in the family so far and this year we had a shared birthday party! As I've said before, I am the cake baker in the family and I always make birthday cakes for my niece and nephew. This year Sylvia turned 5 so she's finally at an age where she can think through what kind of cake she wants all by herself. I was really excited about that, so at the beginning of April, I asked what she wanted her cake to be and I half expected it to be some kind of elaborate Frozen cake. Instead, to my surprise, she thought for a second and answered that she wanted a heart cake with berries. Just a simple heart cake with berries. She made a pretty good choice.

A heart cake with berries was also a nice choice because that meant I had a heart cake with berries instead of a Frozen cake for my birthday too. I used Funfetti cake because it's fun and a family favorite. I mean, for a box mix, it's pretty good! It's got sprinkles! Who doesn't like sprinkles?Especially with a few secret modifications to the mix and some really good homemade icing. I think that icing really makes the cake. No matter how good your cake is, if the icing is bad, the cake is bad. But good icing can make a decent cake taste great.

For this cake, I made a simple cream cheese icing because I knew it'd go great with the strawberries. What I like about this icing is that it's very easy to make and very stable, meaning that your cake won't melt into a mess after a few hours outside on a warm day.

Cream Cheese Icing
1 stick butter - room temperature
1 package cream cheese - room temperature
about half a pound powdered sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract (or more to taste)

Start by beating the butter and cream cheese together. Make sure that they are both room temperature. Don't skip that step or you'll end up with lumpy icing and a big mess. Then add the sugar a little bit at a time until you reach the desired consistency. Add the vanilla last.

Tip: The icing is done when it has a firm, matte look when cold. If it turns glossy when cold, you didn't add enough sugar. 


3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Looks good! She's adorable.
I hope your birthday was very grand!
+Victoria+
justicepirate.com

Megnonymous said...

Looks delicious, Sarah! You've gained a new fan :) I found out about you on Jordan's channel and I'm really excited that I found your blog!

Unknown said...

This looks amazing! I definitely want to try this. I made cupcakes last week and I wanted to make my own cream cheese frosting for them, but I ended up buying a tub of it because I couldn't find a good recipe and felt it would take too long. But this seems like a perfect recipe!!