Chocolate Hearts

I baked and decorated a birthday cake last night in my new favorite color combination, pink and dark brown. I even subconsciously dressed to match the cake in a pink sweater and dark brown vest, but unfortunately no one got the reference because the cake went with Adam this morning and without the cake, my outfit was no longer in context.

Frosting a layered cake is always a bit of a challenge for me. My usual tactic is to use the frosting as adhesive to camouflage a flawed frosting job with sprinkles, candy, cookies or pretty much anything that will distract from the less than perfect frosted surface. A bag of toffee bits will generously cover a chocolate frosted cake and create a pretty shimmer that requires zero frosting skill.

I was having a particularly difficult time frosting the cake last night. Unable to first frost a "crumb" layer of frosting, the surface of the frosting was hopelessly marred with bits of cake crumbs mixed in. My attempts to glob on more frosting only made matters worse as increasingly larger pieces of cake detached from the surface onto the knife.

The cake was spared by the grace of the chocolate heart decorations I had made. First I melted down chocolate chips and spread a thin layer of chocolate on a piece of parchment paper. After the chocolate hardened, I cut out chocolate hearts with a cookie cutter and decorated the cake with the thin chocolate hearts. I was able to cover up most of the flawed pink frosting surface and what I didn't cover with the chocolate hearts, I later gingerly spackled with more pink frosting. Tah Dah! Pink vanilla frosted vanilla cake decorated with chocolate hearts...a very hip color combo indeed…or at least I think so.