You will love making Grandma's favorite heart shaped Valentine cake recipe. Your decorated dessert cake will look every bit as special as it tastes. They're the perfect cakes for a Valentine party, bridal shower, wedding anniversary, or for any special occasion.
Mom's Recipe Scrapbooks (1920s)
This pretty heart shaped Valentine cake looks as special as it tastes. Enjoy serving this delightfully vintage cake at your Valentine's Day party and on birthdays and anniversaries too!
INGREDIENTS:
1/2 cup shortening
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 cups flour, sifted
2 teaspoons baking powder, level
1/2 cup milk
4 egg whites
INSTRUCTIONS:
NOTES:
For a LARGE heart shaped cake, double the above heart-shaped Valentine cake recipe, and bake two cakes: one 9-inch round, and one 9-inch square.
To create the heart shape, simply cut the round cake in half and position each half on the square cake's two adjacent sides, then frost entirely to cover the seams.
Mom's Recipe Scrapbooks (c. 1920s)
3/4 cup butter or shortening
1-1/2 cups granulated sugar
1 cup milk
3 eggs, separated
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon vanilla
4 level teaspoons baking powder
Cream butter, add sugar gradually, then beaten egg yolks. Beat mixture until light and fluffy. Mix and sift flour and baking powder three times.
Add milk and dry ingredients alternately, beating after each addition until smooth. Add vanilla and fold in stiffly beaten egg whites.
Bake in two large or three small layers in moderate oven (375°F) about 30 minutes.
Banana Walnut Icing:
1-1/2 cups brown sugar
Whites of 2 eggs, beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 cup chopped walnuts (optional)
Bananas, enough for each layer
Boil brown sugar and 1/2 cup water until it spins a thread. Remove from fire and pour slowly on the stiffly beaten egg whites. Add vanilla and beat until creamy smooth. Add a drop or two of red food coloring to tint icing to shade desired.
Slice bananas over lower layer of cake and pour icing over them. Place second layer on top and cover with sliced bananas. Add 1/2 cup chopped walnuts to the remaining icing before pouring it over the upper layer of bananas.
The walnuts are optional in this old Valentine Day cake recipe, and they may be omitted.
Aunt Babette's Cook Book (1889)
Take three eggs and one cup of pulverized sugar. Beat the eggs and sugar to the consistency of batter and then add half a cup of cold water, two cups of flour, and two teaspoonfuls of baking powder, sifted twice. Color pink with fruit coloring. Color the dough only.
Bake (350°F) in three layers until done, then fill with whipped cream, sweetened to taste and flavored. Must be eaten the same day. Keep chilled until ready to serve.
Miss Parloa's New Cook Book (1882)
Make a delicious 3-layer party cake that appears ribbon-like when sliced. While this isn't a heart shaped Valentine cake recipe, it makes one of Grandma's favorite homemade cakes for serving on Valentine's Day.
Two cupfuls of sugar, one of butter, one of milk, four of flour (rather scant), four eggs, half a teaspoonful of soda, one teaspoon of cream of tartar.
Beat the butter to a cream. Add the sugar, gradually, beating all the while; then the flavoring (lemon or nutmeg). Beat the eggs very light. Add them and the milk.
Measure the flour after it has been sifted. Return it to the sieve, and mix the soda and cream of tartar with it. Sift this into the bowl of beaten ingredients. Beat quickly and vigorously, to thoroughly mix, and then stop.
Take three sheet pans of the same size, and in each of two put one-third of the mixture, and bake (350°F).
To the other third add four teaspoonfuls of cinnamon, a cupful of currants and about an eighth of a pound of citron, cut fine. Bake this in the remaining pan.
When done, take out of the pans.
Spread the light cake with a thin layer of jelly, while warm. Place on this the dark cake, and spread with jelly. Place the other sheet of light cake on this.
Lay a paper over all, and then a thin sheet, on which put something heavy to weight it down. The cake will press in about two hours.
Dishes & Beverages of the Old South (1913)
Cream well half a cup butter, add a cup and a half of sugar, half a cup cold water, two cups flour sifted twice with two teaspoonfuls baking powder, a teaspoonful lemon extract, and the stiffly beaten whites of six eggs.
Bake (350°F) in small shapes (or muffin tins) for individual servings, frost, with boiled frosting, and ornament with tiny pink candies.
Cookery (1895)
Harlequin cakes are old fashioned favorites. While this isn't a heart shaped Valentine cake recipe, it makes a delicious Harlequin Layer Cake in pastel colors that's
perfect for celebrating St. Valentine's Day, or for serving on any anniversary or special occasion.
1/2 a cup of butter, 1-1/2 cups of sugar, 2-1/2 cups of flour, 1 cup milk, 4 eggs, 2-1/2 teaspoons baking powder, 1 teaspoon vanilla.
Beat butter to a cream, add sugar, and beat again, now add the yolks of eggs and beat well, add the flour and milk alternately, putting in the baking powder with the last quantity of flour. Whip whites of eggs to a stiff froth, add them very lightly.
Take cake mixture and color in three colors, bake about twenty minutes in three separate tins in a moderate oven (350°F).
Turn out, and when cool spread two with the lemon mixture (below), place one over the other, and ice with boiled icing to decorate.
Lemon Mixture:
Rind and juice of 1 lemon, 1 cup sugar, 1 egg, 1 tablespoonful cornstarch, 1/2 cup water. Mix together the water and cornstarch, and cook them for five minutes; add sugar, lemon, and egg, and cook one minute longer.
Almost any cake can be easily decorated for St. Valentine's Day with the help of white frosting, coconut, and red berries such as raspberries, strawberries, or red maraschino cherries.
My father lovingly gave the colorful pop-up Valentine to my mother sometime in the 1930s. It must have cost a pretty penny at the time of the Great Depression, but he thought Mom was worth it!
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