Happy Valentine's Day everyone! I have been baking and cleaning all day in preparation for tonight. Since Lewis and I both have to get an early start tomorrow we decided to make our special evening at home with some moscato wine, our favorite Chinese take-out, and this very pretty (and delicious) strawberry layer cake. While this was a little more time consuming than your average layer cake, the pay off is well worth it, just look at it!
1. four cake pans
2. red and pink food coloring (or whatever color you want)
3. food scale
4. spatula
5. cupcake liners (if you choose to do cupcakes instead of one large cake)
Now..I am about to tell you something that might shock you. I, Annie Patz, used a box cake mix *le gasp. I know, normally I insist on baking from scratch but there was a number of reasons why I choose the mix. I find that homemade angel food cake taste in every way like store bought or box mix cake. Not to mention you have to be willing to use a lot of sugar and separate a hefty bit of eggs in order to achieve said cake. With any other cake, I would immediately be able to tell it wasn't made from scratch (and don't even get me started on store bought frosting) angel is the exception. Anyways..back to the cake...
For four different colors you need to separate the mix into four bowls (duh) so in order to for the layers to come out even, I measured the weight of the mix (676grams) / 4 = 169 grams per pan. Make sure you zero out the weight of the pan/bowl before you measure the batter itself!
The directions on the box say to mix on low for 30 second and medium high for a minute so in order not to over mix, I separated the batter into four bowls, added the food coloring to each, then mixed each individual bowl for 50 seconds...
Bake at 350 for 11-15 min.
1 being the bottom layer and 4 being the top.
To assemble: For this particular cake, I chose to layer whipped cream and strawberries (fitting the red color scheme and what not) I like to layer my strawberry slices like this to ensure that I get one in every bite!
After that, simply frost the whole thing and add decorations! I went a tad overboard with sliced strawberries at the base, cut strawberry hearts in the center, valentine's sprinkles for the top border, and chocolate decorations (tutorial coming soon).
I hope everyone out there is taking time to appreciate the ones they love. Did anyone else make a special dessert for V-day?
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