Valentine's Cake

So, it was Valentine's day morning. While I was sipping my coffee and web surfing, I got this idea of making a valentine's day cake. I don't have any major plan for that day, so I thought, hey what not make a cake!

I didn't have any idea what kind of cake I would make. I really would like to make a heart-shaped cake, but I don't have a heart pan nor heart cake ring. So, I decided to make use of my mini stand-up bear pan that I bought a couple months ago just so that it has valentine's theme.

I didn't even know what filling I would put into the cake. All I know is that the base cake should be chocolate, so I made chocolate sponge cake for the base. Since it wasn't planned, I had limited options for filling. I can only use whatever I had in the fridge and in the pantry. I knew that I wanted to use fondant to cover the whole cake because I had about two pounds of leftover white fondant that I need to use. Since I'm using fondant, the fillings should be something that can stand in room temperature. All I could think of is buttercream, but I don't want it to be just a regular buttercream, so I made blueberry buttercream using the leftover blueberry preserves. I always love deep purple color in a cake. The second choice for the filling is bittersweet dark chocolate ganache. As I mentioned before in the previous posts, I'm not a fan of chocolate at all. But this is valentine's day and I guess I could make an exception. I didn't have any cream to make the ganache, so I used milk instead.

So there you go, two layers of chocolate sponge cake, simple syrup flavored with raspberry liqueur, blueberry buttercream, and bittersweet chocolate ganache, covered in white fondant. The bear is chocolate cake covered in chocolate buttercream. It takes a really long time for me to cover the whole bear (there were some minor problems :) ). I also made little fondant flowers using five-petal flower fondant cutter and daisy cutter. I was thinking to stick a rose (or any kind of flowers) with a long stem in the bear's hand so that it would look like he's holding it, but the gardener cut all the roses in the front yard a week ago :(

The result? I think it looks more like a girl's baby shower cake rather than a valentine's cake :). It got me thinking of buying a heart cake ring just for this special occasion :P.

So, what did I do with the cake? I brought it to my friend's house (remember the guys who would eat anything including failed cakes?) and save the bear for my nephew and niece.

Happy (belated) Valentine's Day everyone!