Easy and quick Valentine’s Day Heart Cake without mold, truly delicious with a red velvet sponge base made with few simple ingredients, soft and melt-in-your-mouth, without fats and without yeast. I decided to soak it a little to flavor the base, but it wouldn’t even be necessary, I chose an alchermes soak. For the filling, a quick cream with sheep ricotta and whipped cream, and for decoration, which are not just a decoration, but add a lot of taste and aroma, fresh strawberries, and I have to confess that for being the first of the season I found them really delicious, sweet and very tasty. I decided to prepare this cake for Valentine’s Day, now February 14, the holiday of all lovers, is getting closer, but it’s so easy and good that it can be made on many other occasions, even as a birthday cake, it can be prepared red, or without coloring, in the shape of a heart, or even a simple circle or number, using an appropriate template, I drew a heart on an A4 sheet which I then folded in half and cut with scissors. I placed the sheet on the base and cut it out with a knife. Easy, right? So let’s prepare it together.
- Difficulty: Easy
- Cost: Affordable
- Preparation time: 4 Minutes
- Portions: 6
- Cooking methods: Oven
- Cuisine: Italian
- Seasonality: Mother's Day, Valentine's Day
Ingredients for Heart Cake without Mold
- 4 medium eggs
- 4.2 oz sugar
- 2.8 oz all-purpose flour
- 0.7 oz potato starch
- 1 tsp wildflower honey
- to taste vanilla
- 0.2 oz red powder coloring
- 1 tsp unsweetened cocoa
- 2.8 oz water
- 0.7 oz alchermes
- 1 tbsp sugar
- 10.5 oz whipping cream
- 10.5 oz sheep ricotta
- 1.8 oz sugar
- 0.3 oz gelatin sheets
- 1.4 oz milk
- 7 oz strawberries
- 1 tsp baking soda
- to taste cake spray gel
Tools to Prepare Heart Cake without Mold
- 1 Bowl
- 1 Electric Whisk
- 1 Spatula
- 1 Sieve
- 2 Small Bowls
- 1 Fork
- 1 Piping Bag
- 1 Star Tip
- 1 Plain Tip
- 1 Knife
- 1 Cutting Board
Steps to Prepare Heart Cake without Mold
Let’s start preparing the sponge cake. Have all the ingredients weighed on the counter and the 16×20 inch pan lined with parchment paper, then preheat the oven to 356°F in static mode. Leave the middle rack.
In a large bowl, start working 4 medium room temperature eggs. Add the sugar and work for about 5 minutes at maximum speed with electric whisks until you get a puffy and frothy mixture. Add honey and vanilla, work again with the whisks then set them aside.
Add the sieved flour with starch little by little and incorporate with a spatula with gentle movements from bottom to top, continue until complete and add the dye and cocoa in the same way. Pour onto the baking sheet lined with parchment paper, distributing the mixture evenly. Bake for 12 minutes at 356°F in a static hot oven.
Take the baked sponge cake out of the oven, cover with a sheet of parchment paper and let it cool.
In a bowl, put water, sugar, and alchermes, bring to a boil in a saucepan or as I did, a few seconds in the microwave at maximum power. Let cool.
Soak gelatin sheets in cold water.
In a large bowl, whip the very cold cream from the fridge with the electric whisks. In a smaller one, work the well-drained ricotta with sugar, you can add a little vanilla to perfume the cream. Add the whipped cream little by little to the cream.
Squeeze the gelatin sheets, place them in a small bowl with milk, and dissolve in the microwave or in a saucepan. Let cool a bit then add a little of the ricotta and cream mixture and mix before adding it to the rest of the cream and mix well.
On an A4 sheet, draw a heart, fold the sheet in half where it divides the heart in half and cut with scissors, the heart is medium-sized, so as to easily obtain 2 from the sponge cake. Place the sheet on the sponge cake and cut out with a sharp knife.
Place one heart on a serving plate, lightly soak with the syrup and fill the base with cream, using a piping bag with a 0.4-inch plain tip. Cover with the second heart. Moisten again a bit and fill with cream using a star tip.
Wash the strawberries with water and baking soda, rinse and dry them. Leave one whole which is placed in the center of the heart on the cream, then slice some into thin slices, removing the stem. Start decorating the cake by placing the slices to create a decoration on the perimeter of the heart. I added 2 heart-shaped sponge cake pieces obtained with a cookie cutter. You can also decorate according to your taste.
Let it rest in the fridge for a couple of hours before enjoying.
