DIY Heart-Shaped Chocolate Cake with Cherry Mascarpone Frosting

Jeff the Chef
"DIY Heart-Shaped Chocolate Cake," from Make It Like a Man!

This DIY Heart-Shaped Chocolate Cake is a bonus not only because it doesn’t require a specialized pan, but heart shape or not, this a great cake! The chocolate flavor is light and seems more like milk chocolate than dark. The cherry comes through beautifully. The cake improves over time. It freezes so well – frosting and all – that it seems flat-out perfect when thawed.

DIY Heart-Shaped Chocolate Cake with Cherry Mascarpone Frosting
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DIY Heart-Shaped Chocolate Cake with Cherry Mascarpone Frosting

Recipe by Make It Like a Man!Course: Dessert
Makes

1

2-layer, heart-shaped cake
Serving

12

You’ll need a very large, flat platter for serving. Improvise with a cutting board.

Ingredients

  • For the Cake

  • 7½ oz. (1½ cups) all-purpose flour

  • 2 tsp baking powder

  • ½ tsp baking soda

  • ½ tsp salt

  • 4 oz. (8 Tbs, or 1 stick) butter

  • 2¼ oz. (¾ cup) Dutch-process cocoa

  • 8¾ oz. (1 cup) buttermilk

  • 4 oz. (½ cup) strong coffee

  • 3 oz. (6 Tbs) water

  • 1 oz. (2 Tbs) dark rum

  • 7 oz. (1 cup, packed) brown sugar

  • 7 oz. (1 cup) granulated sugar

  • 2 large eggs

  • 1 tsp vanilla

  • For the Frosting

  • 1 tsp unflavored gelatin

  • 1 oz. (2 Tbs) water

  • 8 oz. (1 cup) mascarpone, room temperature

  • 8 oz. cream cheese, softened

  • 1 oz. (¼ cup) confectioners sugar

  • 1 tsp vanilla

  • ¼ tsp salt

  • 16 oz. (2 cups) heavy cream

  • 23 oz. (2 cups) cherry preserves or jam, divided

  • Dried, edible rosebuds, for garnish, optional

Directions

  • Cake
  • Butter one 8-inch square cake pan, and one 8-inch round cake pan. Line their bottoms with parchment, butter the parchment, and flour the pans. Preheat the oven to 325°F.
  • Mix the flour, powder, soda, and salt on speed 2 (of 10) for 30 seconds. Transfer to a small mixing bowl. Set aside.
  • Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat. Add the cocoa and stir continuously for 1 minute. Off heat; transfer to a mixing bowl. Add the buttermilk, coffee, water, rum, and both sugars. Whisk until the sugars are dissolved, 1 minute on speed 4. (Batter may appear grainy, but shouldn’t feel gritty.) Whisk in the eggs and vanilla, 1 minute on speed 4.
  • Add the flour mixture in three additions, mixing just until blended each time, on speed 2. Use a spatula to scrape the sides and bottom of the mixing bowl and incorporate any remaining, unmixed flour.
  • Divide the batter between the pans, 1½ lbs. of batter per pan. Bake until cakes look like they’re about to pull away from the sides of the pan, test clean (maybe with a trace of chocolate oil, but no wet batter), about 33 minutes. Cool on a wire rack for 15 minutes, then turn them out onto the rack (and peel away the parchment) to cool completely, about 2 hours.
  • Frosting
  • Sprinkle the gelatin over the water in a coffee cup. Allow the gelatin to hydrate, 5 minutes. Nuke the gelatin mixture for 5 seconds, stir. Repeat until the gelatin is completely dissolved. Set aside.
  • Mix the mascarpone with the cream cheese, sugar, vanilla, and salt until light and fluffy, 2 minutes on speed 6. Set aside. In a clean bowl, whip the cream to soft peaks, ramping up to highest speed. Gradually pour in the gelatin mixture, and whip to stiff peaks. Hand whisk 1/3 of the cream into the cheese mixture, and fold in the rest of the cream in two additions. Stir 17¼-oz. (1½ cups) of the jam to loosen it up, and fold it into the frosting.
  • Assembly
  • Split both cakes in half horizontally, turning each cake into two layers. Cut the round layers in half, creating half-moons. Cut the square layers in half diagonally, creating triangles. Arrange two of the triangles to create the bottom half of a heart, and two of the half-moons to create the top half. (See photo, below.) A little trimming will be necessary.
  • Reserve 1 cup of frosting for the sides of the cake. Spread a thin crumb coat of frosting over the bottom heart layer. Spread remaining 5¾ oz. (½-cup) jam over the crumb coat. Spread half of remaining frosting over the jam. Stack the next cake layer on top. Spread the other half of the frosting over it. Spread the reserved frosting thinly along the sides of the layers, and then use an offset spatula to rather aggressively neaten it up. (Optionally, dust with dried, crushed, edible rosebuds.)

Notes

  • Unless I specifically call out doing it by hand, I use stand mixer. I use the word “mix” to describe the use of the paddle attachment, and the word “whisk” to describe the use of the whisk attachment.
  • I’m not a believer in using parchment to line a cake pan unless it’s truly necessary.
  • Ideally, your cake pans should be not just of the same material, but the same general color. Otherwise, your cakes may need different bake times. (Yes, light colored and dark colored pans bake differently.)
  • I don’t mind the look of the cherry pieces in the frosting. If it bothers you, buy a smooth jam. Without the cherry pieces, you could easily pipe the frosting onto the top layer. The stabilized cream should hold a piped shape well.
  • Over time, the weight of the jam will compress the bottom cake layer – as you can see in my photos, which were taken after the cake was frozen and thawed! (See “Social Learning” below; this cake freezes miraculously.) Compression takes time; if you’re serving the cake same-day, don’t worry yourself about it. If you don’t mind uneven layers (I don’t), again: don’t worry about it. If you’re making this cake in advance, and you want the layers to appear even, cut them so that the bottom layer is twice as high as the top layer.
  • If you use the rosebuds, you may decide to use a few of them whole, for looks. Remove these from any servings. You’ll notice as you crush them that each bud contains an uncrushable kernel that, although edible, isn’t pleasant to eat. Discard those as you crush. Although dried rose pedals do have a pronounced flavor, you won’t use enough to make the flavor readily apparent, and when it is apparent, it melds beautifully with the cherry.
"DIY Heart-Shaped Chocolate Cake," from Make It Like a Man!
wikiHow

The Backstory

This completely delighted my husband. Score!

The upside is that I didn’t have to buy a heart-shaped baking pan for this cake, which would just take up valuable space and be used who-knows-how-few times. Once, when I was living in New York, I was shopping with a friend, and she stumbled onto a silk scarf that she really liked. She wasn’t sure if she should buy it, though, not because she didn’t like it, not because it was expensive … but because she wasn’t sure she had anyplace to keep it in her microscopic, Greenwich Village apartment. Today, even though I have a nice-sized kitchen, believe me, it’s crammed to the gills. I’m not sure I have room for an additional spatula, let alone another specialty baking pan.

Social Learning

This is such a good cake, that I’m considering submitting to the Journal of Cherry-Chocolatial Cakeology. What makes it so worthwhile? A lot of chocolate cakes emphasize darkness. This one doesn’t, and that’s refreshing. Because of that, the rum has a really nice effect; it doesn’t assert itself as much as it modulates the chocolate flavor. Also, because the cake isn’t dark, it’s easier for the cherry to balance its flavor.

If this cake is good, it’s also somewhat unwieldy. I don’t have a flat platter large enough for it, so I used a cutting board that I lined with parchment. I was able to finagle it into my refrigerator, but the leftovers I cut into more manageable chunks. So I guess that’s the downside. But more upside: half of the manageable chunks I froze. I took a couple 6″x9″ plastic containers, inverted the lids, cut the cake to fit, placed the pieces onto the inverted lids, and snapped the containers into place atop the lids, thereby creating makeshift, rectangular cake domes. I froze some and refrigerated the others. Two things came from that: the refrigerated cake was delicious for days. However, the frozen cake, once thawed, was so good, that I’d have happily served it to guests, had it not been for that pesky pandemic. A cake that freezes – frosting and all – this perfectly doesn’t come along every day.

It’d be nice if you could arrange it so that the tops of your cake wind up face-up in the top layer when you stack them. They’re pretty this way, and easier to frost. But it isn’t necessary. The cakes, especially when split into layers, are delicate. A cake lifter is an ideal way to move them around as you work with them.

DIY Heart-Shaped Chocolate Cake with Cherry Mascarpone Frosting

Credit for images on this page: unless cited otherwise, Make It Like a Man! This content was not solicited by anyone, nor was it written in exchange for anything. Thanks, Kesor. Thanks Prosper Circle. 

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38 thoughts on “DIY Heart-Shaped Chocolate Cake with Cherry Mascarpone Frosting”

  7. What an innovative way to make a heart shaped cake.I have two small heart shaped pans in my vast repertoire of pans so I could use them hopefully. I love the look of your chocolate cake recipe Jeff, I am always on the hunt for the perfect chocolate cake and this one could be it. No need to use actual chocolate, the rum and coffee provide the perfect flavour enhancers with the cocoa. The fondant looks perfect for a special occasion. This one is a very clever recipe, thanks so much.
    Pauline recently posted…In My Kitchen, February 2022

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  9. What a fun idea, Jeff! The fact that you didn’t need to purchase a new pan is definitely a bonus. One time – back in the dark ages – I owned a heart-shaped pan. I think *maybe* I used it one time before I finally got rid of it. It’s one of those things that sounds really cool…until you realize that you’ll literally never use it. And rum in a chocolate cake? Now that’s different. I like it! Now let’s just get rid of that pesky pandemic, mmmk? Happy (belated) Valentine’s Day to you and your husband!
    David @ Spiced recently posted…Sheet Pan Chicken Pot Pie

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  11. This sounds like a fabulous recipe. I just made molten cakes so there would be no leftovers. I’d rather have yours! As for special utensils…I have what I need and though I could always “need” more, my space is full. So if and when I decide to clean up, well, that will be the day I am ready to refill…so to speak!
    Abbe@This is How I Cook recently posted…Sicilian Braised Chicken Recipe with Salami

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  12. That looks and sound so good; what a clever way to cobble a heart shape out of one square and one round cake. When we first renovated our kitchen, I had so much room in my cupboards, now I have an extra pantry in the basement to hold items that hardly ever get used, even though I do contemplate a new purchase very carefully (in fairness, some of my extras are for my food styling gigs!).
    Eva Taylor recently posted…Broccoli and Cheddar Soup

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    • I’m so envious! I’ll have to put in some effort and come up with a storage solution like that.

      Reply

  14. I love the heart-shaped cake. Really cute. The chocolate cake with the cherry mascarpone frosting sounds perfect. I love the chocolate and cherry combination.

    Reply

  15. Sounds like somebody’s husband was lucky this Valentine’s Day! I really look forward to trying the cake. The description that it’s not so much dark and a bit milk chocolatey sounds really good to me. Your cutting up of the cake reminds me of cakes my mother made when I was young. There was a little booklet – I think it was called “Cake Cut Ups – that gave her all sorts of ways to make fun cakes for us kids.

    Reply

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