How to Make Heart-Shaped Cake with Buttercream Roses

There’s no sweeter way to say “Be mine” or “I love you” than with yummy treats. With Valentine’s Day just a few days away, a heart-shaped cake is a great way to make the people in your life feel extra special. Today, I’m going to share with you a pretty simple cake to make yet it makes for a very impressive presentation.

What’s more fitting for Valentine’s than hearts, chocolate, and roses? Well, on this cake we will have it all! This heart-shaped cake is made with chocolate cake filled with raspberries and chocolate ganache and topped with red buttercream roses.

How to Make a Heart-Shaped Cake?

1. How Do You Cut Your Heart-Shaped Cake?

No heart-shaped pan? No problem. What I did here is baked the cake in 6” square and 6” round pans. If you cut the round cakes in half and placed them on the 2 sides of the square, you will get a heart!

Place the cake on a heart-shaped cake board (use the pans to trace the shape on to board the cut it slightly smaller than the tracing). Then place the cake on another cake board. We will place this here temporarily while we do the next step.

2. Icing with Buttercream a Heart-Shaped Cake

Frost the cake with buttercream. You don’t need to put a lot of buttercream on top of the cake since we are adding more buttercream with the roses. A simple crumb coat will do on the top will do. After frosting the cake let it chill in the refrigerator for at least 15 minutes.

In the meantime, make three varying shades of pink buttercream. We are going to make a watercolor effect on the sides of the cake.

Take the chilled cake and with a small metal spatula, spread the three shades of pink buttercream randomly on the sides of the cake. There are no rules here, just have fun!

Then with a bench scraper or pictured here is my favorite buttercream smoothing tool, a taping knife, run it along the sides of the cake, scraping the extra buttercream. You can add more pink buttercream on areas that you think might need it and then scrape it off again. Repeat until you are satisfied with the effect. Put the back again in the refrigerator to chill.

Now, save one bowl of the pink buttercream on the side then take all the remaining buttercream, the other pinks, and the uncolored, place it in the bowl and make red buttercream. Using a mixer will make it easier will make your life easier. To make a nice deep red color, I like to use the Chefmaster Super Red or Red Red. Add a teeny bit of black gel color, a small drop will deepen the color even more, like a scarlet red.

Take the chilled cake out and run a knife around the bottom of the cake to loosen it from the board. Carefully transfer it to the final board or serving plate.

Taking pastry tip #104, pipe a ribbon border on the bottom part of the cake.

Then also pipe along the top border of the cake.

3. Decorating Your Heart-Shaped Cake with Buttercream Roses

Now, we will start filling the top of the cake with red buttercream roses.

To make the rose, take the same tip # 104, and with a flower nail, pipe a cone of buttercream on top.

Then place the tip parallel to the cone, pipe the center of the rose by turning the nail and piping the buttercream at the same time.

Pipe two petals around the center, the petals are like little overlapping rainbows.

Then pipe three overlapping petals enclosing the two petals before it.

Pipe five petals in the next row. Take a flower lifter or a small spatula and carefully lift the flower off the nail.

Place it on the cake and use the tip of the flower nail to keep the flower in place while sliding the flower lifter off the flower.

Repeat until all the top of the cake is covered with roses.

Place the pink buttercream in a pastry bag and with tip #104, pipe another ribbon border on top of the red one.

You can use a knife to push the buttercream to straighten the edges.

And there you have a beautiful cake to wow your loved ones. Happy Valentine’s!

Enjoy Your Valentine’s Day Cake!

Special thanks to Darlene for her Valentine’s Day recipe!

If you are interested in learning how to make beautiful cakes like Darlene, you can participate in her online course! Use the coupon code CAKEJOURNAL and you can take the course for $29, instead of $49.  The code is valid until February 16th, so don’t wait on this amazing opportunity.

Sign up for the course here.