Conversation Heart Cakes

I am always a sucker for adorable, delectable sweets, but rarely do I feel like going to the trouble of making them myself. Also, while I have an absurd amount of kitchen gadgetry, I only own single copies of individual dessert pans, so making mini-desserts is not usually a practical option. The great thing about deciding to bake along with the Baked Sunday Mornings group is I have now made two outstanding Baked treats that I never would have attempted on my own. (Side note: A co-worker came up to me last week to say he's still dreaming of the Chinese five-spice scones I made last time).

Conversation heart cakes were picked for this morning, obviously, it being Valentine's Day and all. One awful Valentine's Day dinner (because the restaurant staff were so hateful) many years ago ruined any interest I had in doing Valentine-y stuff. However, I am always looking for an excuse to bake, so I announced a "chocolate desserts week" at work and brought these cakes in for one of the days.

You can find the recipe over at Baked Sunday Mornings. I did my best to strictly follow the recipe, so I found black cocoa powder at the amazing spice shop down the street and discovered the AmeriColor food gel kit C's mom gave me had the perfect amount of "super black" food gel. I really loved the color it gave my cake, although I am loving the staining on my kitchen sink a little less. Following the schedule I've set for myself in baking for work, I made the cake the night before and it cooled on a wire rack for about 5-6 hours while I slept. Then I woke up absurdly early to cut the cakes (using Wilton's 4-inch heart cutter, which was actually really easy to use) and frost them. Since my only rimmed sheet pan is a ¾ sheet pan, which is 21'' x 15'' instead of the 18'' x 13'' pan called for in the recipe, 20 minutes in the oven was perfect. With the overnight rest post-baking, I had no trouble cutting hearts from the sheet cake. I wound up with 18 hearts (9 mini cakes) total and very little in the way of wasted cake.

As suggested, I popped the cut-out cakes into the freezer while making the cream cheese frosting (this is critical). I used the fuchsia-colored food gel for my frosting, since all the reds and pinks from that kit have been used up in the name of Baked's red velvet cake. Unfortunately, since I had so many additional cakes, I was a little short on the proper amount of frosting for all 9 cakes. The crumb coating went alright, but partially because I was in a rush and partially because I didn't have enough frosting, you can definitely still see the super-dark cake crumbs through the frosting. Sadly, I completely ran out of time to write anything on my cakes, so I skipped over the decorative white chocolate. Making the cake batter, baking the cake, and cutting hearts out was easy. But with my limited refrigerator/freezer space and limited frosting (I should have made more immediately), assembling these cakes probably took me two hours total. Frosting these got messy quickly, and I wound up with crumbs everywhere. In a couple of the mini cakes, I added a layer of blueberry jam on top of the cream cheese frosting, partially to make up for the limited frosting and partially because I tried some on one of the cake scraps and it was really good. My co-workers agreed.

All in all, people really liked these (including myself), but they were somewhat confusing to people - no one seemed to know if they should take a whole cake for themselves or just a small piece. Honestly, as cute as these hearts are, if I made this again I'd probably bake it as a sheet cake but just cut it in half and serve it that way. Less adorable, but just as tasty and much easier on the baker.

In the end, I did need to make a few modifications to the recipe:

• I was out of buttermilk, so I used coconut milk in its place and added ¾ teaspoon of baking powder since I was changing the baking chemistry. This worked really well (somewhat surprisingly - I was worried). I couldn't taste the coconut, and neither could my coconut-hating friend (he still doesn't know I put it in these). Plus the cakes still tasted like a velvet cake, even if they weren't accurately "velvet cake".
• I added 1 teaspoon of espresso powder to add some extra chocolate-y oomph (I like the Williams-Sonoma one, the King Arther Flour one quickly turned into a shatterproof lump on me).
• I replaced the cake flour with the "equivalent substitution" of 2 cups + 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour plus 5 tablespoons cornstarch.