Homemade Heart Shaped Valentine's Cake

You can make this easy heart shaped cake for your special Valentine even if you have never baked a cake before. No special pans or expensive cake decorating items are needed. Everything you need can be found on your grocers shelves.

All you will need is a box of white cake mix, along with the listed ingredients on the cake mix box to make the cake. One tub of white cake icing, two if you like thick icing on your cake. One small bottle of red food coloring, which can be purchased at the grocery store and usually comes in a box with three other colors. One 9 x 9 inch square cake/bread pan and one 9 inch round cake pan.

Prepare your cake pans and preheat your oven according to the cake mix directions, then follow the directions for preparing the cake mix. Once your cake batter is ready, begin adding the red food coloring a few drops at a time, stirring after each food coloring addition until it reaches the shade of pink or red that you desire. One thing to remember when you add the red food coloring is the cake color will turn out slightly darker than the batter color.

When your batter is the pink/red shade that you desire, pour half of the batter in each of your prepared cake pans, eyeball the batter in the pan and try to get it the exact same thickness in each pan. You can use a toothpick or spoon handle to measure it if you like, bake according to package directions.

While your cake is baking is a good time to prepare a tray to put your finished product on. You will need a large, flat tray big enough to accommodate your heart shaped cake, approximately 15 x 15 inches. If you do not have one, a sturdy piece of cardboard, like the side of a box, covered with aluminum foil works perfect.

Once the cake is baked, cool according to package direction, then take the cake in the square pan and turn it out onto your tray, placing it on point near the bottom of the tray. This is the bottom of the heart. Next, slice the round cake in half, placing a half on each top side of the diagonally placed square cake. You will now see the heart shape. Make sure the cake pieces are butted up tightly against each other.

Open your tub(s) of white icing and spoon it out into a large non-plastic bowl, (the red food coloring will stain plastic). Now do your icing just like you did the cake mix, begin to add a few drops of red food coloring, stirring after each addition, until the icing is the shade of red that you desire. Tubs of whipped icing/frosting are the easiest to work with, Cool Whip can be substituted for icing also.

Spread the icing on you heart cake, and you now have a beautiful cake for your Valentine. You can kick it up a notch by adding heart shaped candies, sprinkles, etc.

This heart shaped cake not only works well for Valentines Day, I have prepared these heart shaped cakes for numerous occasions like engagement parties and wedding showers, using the appropriate food coloring to match the occasion. A heart shaped chocolate cake with chocolate icing is always a hit, no food coloring required. You can even get more creative and make the cake a double-decker heart by baking two batches of cake mix and adding another layer on top of the first heart.

The possibilities of this easy heart shaped Valentine cake are limited only to your imagination.