Mini Vanilla Heart Cakes

 Ingredients

 3/8 cup butter at room temperature + extra to grease

3/8 cup powdered sugar

2 small eggs, at room temperature

1 tsp vanilla

3/8 cup plain flour

¼ tsp baking powder

Directions

 1. Grease the base of a cake tin and then line it with parchment paper. Brush some butter on top of this parchment as well. Preheat the oven to 190° Celsius.

2. Sift the flour and baking powder together and keep aside.

3. Beat the butter and sugar till pale and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time and beat well. Add the vanilla and beat again.

4. Fold in the flour with a large metal spoon, mixing while making sure that the air incorporated while beating is not lost.

5. Pour the batter (it’ll be a little thick) into the prepared cake tin and flatten the top gently with a spatula. Bake for about 20 minutes or till a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. The top will be nice and brown.

6. Run a knife around the cake to release the sides from the tin. Leave to cool for 5 minutes, then upturn it onto a wire rack and cool completely.

7. While the cake cools, make the buttercream frosting (recipe below).

8. While still on the wire rack, press a heart-shaped cookie cutter on the cake and cut through. Push it upwards with your fingers from under the wire rack. Repeat till all the cake is finished up.

9. Spread a little frosting on a heart, then sandwich with another one. Spread a little more frosting on top and leave as is, or decorate with sprinkles/stars/silver drageés.

Your kids will have lots of ideas; mine had the brilliant idea of decorating with coloured stars!!

 Pink Buttercream Frosting

 70 g unsalted butter, at room temperature

140 g icing sugar

2 Tbsp milk

Pink food colour

1. Beat the butter till soft. Add the sugar in parts, beating well after each addition.

2. Add the milk a tablespoon at a time, and only if the buttercream appears dry.

3. Add a few drops of food colour and stir well till the colour is uniformly mixed into the frosting.

 Notes:

 1. Kids will love cutting through the cake with the cookie cutter, though you’ll have to extract the cut shapes!

2. Spreading the frosting is also relatively simple, just give your child a butter knife and ask to spread. If you want to go fancy, you can pipe it on the top.

3. Decorating is definitely the kid’s area – even toddlers can do this!! Give them the raw material and let them do what they want!

4. Other modifications to this can be:

Coffee sponge with coffee glaze

Chocolate sponge with chocolate ganache

Pink Cake with white buttercream frosting