How to Make... A Heart Shaped Cake for your loved one on Valentines

Hello!! Today I'll be listing how to make some special Valentines cakes for your loved ones!! You can make these on your own or with your kids, either is just as good!!

Ingredients :
2 eggs
200g self raising flour
200g caster sugar
200g soft butter or margarine
a couple of drops of vanilla extract
jam

Frosting :
1 egg white
1tsp glycerol
icing sugar
food colouring

Method :

- Beat the butter and sugar until evenly creamed
- Beat the eggs and add a little at a time along with the vanilla extract, if mixture starts to split, add a little bit of flour and continue to mix
- Add the flour a little at a time and combine until evenly mixed.
- Split between 2 round tins, or if you have a heart shaped tin put the mix in that, if not never fear!! We can cut the shape after :)
- Bake in the middle of the oven for about 20 mins, 180 - 200 degrees.
- When the cake is cooked take it from the oven and leave to cool in the tin, after about 5 mins transfer it to a wire rack and leave until completey cooled.
- When cooled, sandwich the two cakes together with plenty of jam in the middle.
- Cut away parts of the cake to make the cake resemble a heart shape.
- Make the frosting by combining the egg yolk and the glycerol and then beat in icing sugar a little at a time. I haven't put a measurement for this as its completely down to you how thick you want your frosting to be. Add a few drops of pink or red food colouring and if you like some edible glitter.
- Apply the frosting to the cake and smooth out with a pallet knife or just a normal butter knife!

Thats it!! Its pretty easy!! Just a standard cake with a special Valentines Day twist!!

Etsy

I've made an Etsy account to start making and selling things!!
I have a few quite exciting projects to start soon, just collecting materials, I'll post some of the how-to's on here once I've tried them out for myself!
Click Here for my Etsy page!!

How to Make... Clay for your kids to play with!!

My daughter, a friend and I made some air drying clay today and I thought I'd share how we did it for those of us who might be at a loose end with kids!
We got the recipe from a book called "The Toddlers Busy Book".

- Stir 2 cups of salt with 2/3 cup of water over a low heat for 4-5 minutes.
- Remove from the heat and add 1 cup of cornflower and 1/2 cup of cold water and stir until smooth.
- Return to the heat and it will thicken really quickly.
- Allow it to cool for about 5 minutes and then your little ones can shape it into whatever they like!!
- Leave it to dry and when its completely set then it can be painted, glued or coloured in.

We had a lot of fun playing with it with cookie cutters and a rolling pin.
It was very easy to make and use. The only problem is because of the ammount of salt it dries your hands out very quickly.
However, definitely a lot of fun :)