Making traditions for celebrating special occasions and honoring them gives me something wonderful to look forward to every year & instills my creativity! One such Tradition that I created with my Husband Shaleen was Baking together on Valentine’s Day! It gives us both an amazing opportunity to create something beautiful together and our team work always results in something very delightful. None of us are adept bakers but we’re good at following a process meticulously & that has always helped us to get a flavorful outcome 😃
I did a guest blog post last year on my Valentine’s Baking for my Cousin in Mumbai who is a renowned blogger: Ri(t)ch Styles and you can find that blog post here:
Our cake this year was also Vanilla flavored with macaroon themed decor compared to strawberries last year. Adding frosting & chocolate ganache to a homemade cake enhances its taste and gives it a Bakery look!
We followed the same Vanilla cake recipe as last year from Joy of Baking and the only addition we did was brushing some sugar syrup (rested & cooled) on our cake layers to keep it soft. Find the recipe here: www.joyofbaking.com/VanillaCake.html. Pay attention to details (I recommend watching the video), little things like speed of mixer, time needed for resting, cooling down etc. can make a huge difference. Also ensure you have the right equipments and look for alternatives if you don’t have what is given in the recipe. Some of the important Equipments that were helpful were below:
- Kitchen Aid Mixer
- Cake Leveler (To get rid of the mound of the cake)
- 2 Cake Baking pans
- Rotating Frosting stand
- Icing Spatula
See the frosting process on Rotating stand here:
It is very important to rest the cake in refrigerator for at least an hour after applying the first layer of frosting as it helps to settle down the crumbs. I also prefer to rest it for 15 mins after the 2nd layer & before ganache & decoration. Also, you can add any food color of your choice to the frosting. Ensure that your chocolate ganache is cooled before you spread it on the cake but if it gets too thick, feel free to microwave it for 10 seconds or so to get a flowing consistency. Start poring the ganache at the center of the cake and spread slowly and evenly to get the drip effect.
Chocolate ganache is made using Chocolate chips & heavy whipping cream, see recipe here (I didn’t add the salt in ganache as given in the recipe):
Once your ganache is spread evenly, feel free to decorate as you like with chocolates, sprinkles, strawberries, Macaroons and more! You’ll find abundance of Valentines baking decor in stores during this season and my favorite go-to stores were Michaels & Home Goods. I love making chocolate strawberries & they’re super easy to decorate.
See my Chocolate strawberries decoration video here:
We usually do the Valentine’s baking on a weekend to ensure that we have enough time. It took us about 4 hours to bake this cake (including resting time of ~1 hour 15 mins) but it was an evening well spent together and it was lovely to see our tradition coming together so beautifully! I’m already thinking about ideas for my next year’s cake 😉. I hope you guys can start Traditions of your own and truly relish them each year, and if you do bake this cake at home, let me know how it turns out…xoxo!! <3
You too are a lovely couple ❤️
First time here, loved your detailed description. Coincidentally I was thinking to bake cake as a surprise for my husband this Valentine’s Day and somehow came across your page, and even more coincidentally I follow joy of baking recipe, never tried the vanilla cake, but with your post, gives me confidence to try it out. I am going to be attempting at Indian pineapple cake (that’s what my husband likes). Hope it comes out well. Thanks for the post.
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