When I was in the seventh grade, I wrote an impassioned essay about my hatred of Valentine's Day. "Valentine's Day," I read out to the class. "Is my least favorite day of the year. Anybody who likes Valentine's Day is an idiot. It's just a made-up holiday that big nameless corporations invented so that the mindless masses go out and spend money unnecessarily."
Pretty sure that my essay received crickets. Not to mention that, what seemed anti-establishment and rebellious at age 12 actually seems pretty, uh, trite now. To say the least.
I'm sorry to say that, now that I'm older, I kind of... like Valentine's Day? Although Erlend and I aren't really the type of couple to dress up and pay an arm and a leg for a special Valentine's prix fixe dinner (in fact, it's quite the opposite — we are likely spending this Saturday evening in sweatpants and ordering a double order of Papa John's), I think the holiday is kind of cute. The way my friends and I exchange silly gifts and funny cards, the special candies that appear in the supermarket and of course, Valentine's Day themed baked goods in general. Because really — heart-shaped baked goods are pretty goshdarnadorbs! no matter what, which is why I've decorated this cake with a constellation of marzipan hearts (inspired by the many wonderfully marzipan decorated cakes of my incredibly talented blogger friend Molly, of course):
As for the cake itself, I figured I'd attempt another try at recreating the perfect red velvet cake recipe I had a few years ago in New York City (because red velvet = red = love = Valentine's Day...? Or something). But anyway, this recipe is the closest yet that I've come to recreating that memorable red velvet cake yet: a cake with a dense and moist crumb, with a deep velvety and almost chocolatey flavor accompanied by a bold, dark red color.
However, the cake does have one weak spot: its frosting. Although red velvet cake is traditionally served with cream cheese frosting these days, the perfect cake I had in New York was served with some sort of incredibly light and creamy orange-scented buttercream frosting. I haven't had a buttercream frosting yet that's come close to it. BUT I did find through my research (ehem, Google and reading New York Times cooking articles) that the original red velvet cake from the 1940s was served with something called ermine frosting, or boiled milk frosting. The frosting instructed you to make a pudding from milk and flour, before whipping it up with butter and sugar to create an incredibly light and fluffy frosting. And by light and fluffy, I mean light and fluffy — think of the soapiest bubble bath you've ever taken and imagine that those foamy soap suds are actually edible. That's the texture of ermine frosting. While it was cool to serve the cake with a historically significant recipe, I still think the cake would have been better balanced out with a tangy, citrusy cream cheese frosting. Oh well. For next time!
P.S. My incredibly talented photographer friend Celeste took some behind-the-scenes photos of me cutting, styling and playing around with this cake — check it out on her blog!
Some baker's notes:
Although I made this recipe in four 6-inch cake pans, you can turn it into a three layer cake instead by using three 9-inch cake pans. Shorten the baking time by 10 minutes to 25-30 minutes.
Because this cake uses a lot of red food coloring, I suggest using a red food coloring gel as opposed to plain old red food coloring dye. In my experience, gels tend to disperse color more evenly throughout the batter and you end up with a more vividly colored baked good. I also think that gels taste less artificial than dyes, but that one might just be in my head.
I used these cookie cutters for the larger hearts and a cutter from this mini cookie cutter set for the smaller hearts.
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