Kootek Floral Heart Box Cake for Your Dear

Directions

BAKE CAKE:

1. Preheat oven to 325F. Grease 2 8 inch heart pans (I used two full pans and then split the layers into 4 even layers).

2. Mix all dry ingredients together with whisk. Whisk eggs, oil, and vanilla together, then add milk and sourcream, whisk again. Add in dry ingredients, mix, then hot coffee and mix well for 2 minutes.

3. Pour into prepared pans. Bake for about 50 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.

4. Let cool entirely before assembling cake. Ideally, chill layers in fridge or freezer.

MAKE THE BUTTERCREAM:

1. In a stand mixer with the paddle attachment, beat the butter until light and fluffy for 7 minutes. Add remaining ingredients, stir on low to mix together then increase speed to high for 2 mins. Let mix on lowest setting for 5 minutes to remove air bubbles.

YOU WILL ALSO NEED:

1. Optional raspberry preserves filling

2. Vanilla buttercream for making the flowers in your desired colors. You can cover your heart box in a colored vanilla buttercream or the chocolate buttercream.

ASSEMBLE & DECORATE CAKE:

1. Stack the first two layers on a sturdy cake board, creating a buttercream dam for your raspberry preserves filling, and crumb coat in the fridge for 20 mins.

2. Meanwhile, crumb coat one single layer on an equal size cake board (i.e. 8 inch heart shape) and place in freezer. This will be the lid of your flower box.

3. Final coat your first two layers and lid, smoothing out as best as possible, either in chocolate buttercream or a vanilla buttercream color of your choice. Place bottom two layers in fridge and lid in freezer.

4. Once final coat has set, make the angle to create the illusion of a floating lid: slice the fourth layer of cake diagonally to create an angle, then flip up the top scrap of cake and stack the high angles on top of each other to make the angle even larger.

5. Place this angled piece on top of your two stacked layers, and roughly crumb coat (you will be covering this piece up entirely).

6. Insert three dowels in your stacked cake layers to support the lid. Take the lid out of the freezer and place on top - it should be angled to look like it's "floating."

7. Place whole cake in the fridge to set.

8. Next, make your roses using tips K10 in your desired color on parchment squares and place in freezer. Place frozen flowers on to the opening in the cake using generous blobs of buttercream to adhere, once flowers have been frozen for 20 minutes. Use K20 to make leaves, you will need a lot of leaves to fill in all the little gaps and make it look like the flowers are sticking out of the box.

9. Add fondant trim to the top and bottom of the box, if desired and spray with edible glitter!