Welcome to How To Cook That: Creating a Colourful Heart Inside Cake
Today we are going to make this cute and colourful heart inside cake, which has caught the attention of many of you. A few of you have sent me pictures of similar style cakes that you've seen on tablespoon.com, and one particular one was made by Beth from the blog Hungry Happenings. She had made it for her friends and family, and they were both happy for me to make it for you.
To start, we need to mix 3 packets of cake mix together and add the required ingredients according to the packet. Make sure to follow the instructions carefully as this is an important step in creating our heart inside cake. Once we have mixed everything together, split the mixture evenly between 5 different bowls. This will help us achieve a uniform colour for our cake.
Now it's time to add your colours! You'll need to be fairly generous with the amount of colour you use, as this will determine the shape and appearance of your heart. These colours should be reasonably dark, so choose wisely. Place each bowl into sandwich bags, twist the top, and cut off the corners. Squeeze out some of the coloured mix onto a tray lined with non-stick paper. Then, swap to the next colour and swirl that all over the tray, repeating this process until you've used up all of your colours.
For this tie-dye mixing effect, I want to share an interesting fact. Beth actually learned this technique from another website, Handmade Charlotte.com, and one of their contributors, Sandra, who heads up the art department at a university in Kansas, came up with this idea for her cake that she made there. This unique method creates a beautiful, marbled effect on our cake.
Once you've added all of your colours and mixed them together, place the tray on the bench to get rid of any air pockets. This is an important step, as it will help prevent your heart from becoming misshapen or developing bubbles during baking. Place the tray in the oven and bake until the mixture is cooked all the way through.
Once your cake is cooled, remove it from the tray and trim off the top, browned layer using a knife or a cake leveler. Take the cutter and cut out a heart shape, or whatever shape you have chosen, and then take off the base of the shape because we don't want to have browned cake down the middle of our cake.
As I mentioned earlier, this particular amount of mixture made enough hearts for two cakes. If you're only wanting to make one, you can cut it in half. Line a loaf pan with foil and bring the sides up higher than the actual pan so that the mixture won't overflow in the oven. Make up two more packets of vanilla cake mix, place two cups of mixture in the base of the dish.
Now we're going to bake this for 10 minutes because the shape tends to sink, and I don't want it right on the bottom. I want it more in the middle. After this time, it will not yet be cooked but will have formed a light skin on top. Add some mixture down the centre of that, which is going to go into that little dip in the centre of the heart.
Stack your hearts and place them top side down into the centre of the tin. If the edges of your dish are sloped out like mine, you may need to cut one of them on an angle for the last one. This will help pack them in tightly, which is going to hold them in place. Cover over the whole thing with more cake mixture.
Now it's time to bake this cake again. Once it's done, let it cool, and then trim off the outer browned layer so that it leaves nice, straight sides. Cover the whole thing in frosting – I'm using the one that came with the packet mix.
To make our tie-dye frosting, we need to take a snake of each of the colours we have chosen and gently twist and squash them together. Then, twist it again and squash it together, and finally, roll it out. I used neon food colours for this, which I haven't used before, and thought they had a really metallic taste to them.
It's up to you if you want to use these colours; otherwise, just use normal food colours. Everyone else who ate it thought it was fine, but I just thought it had a bit of an aftertaste to it. Lift the frosting up and place it over the cake, trim off the excess when you get to the corners, squash them together to seal it, and then place your heart on top.
To finish our cake, we can add some final touches, such as decorating the outside with some coloured icing or adding some sprinkles to make it even more festive. And that's it! Our colourful heart inside cake is complete, and I hope you enjoy making it as much as I do. Happy baking!
[music: The Boat Song by setsailtv, used with permission]