Embrace 2020 45/365: cake therapy

This week I was a hot mess and WAY too in my head so I decided to do the opposite of what makes sense when you're overwhelmed with life and decided to make a fancy little cake for my family. We don't typically do much for Valentine's Day and I would have been happy buying them each a nice chocolate bar but I decided to get tactile and try a new recipe.

I love small, tall cakes so decided to try Preppy Kitchen's Valentine's Raspberry Cake. Initially I was like, "Do I have the energy for this?!" It's a lemon raspberry 3-layer cake + there's a white chocolate buttercream (that you split in half to color one half) inside + Italian buttercream outside + candy melt hearts. But I was like, I NEED CAKE THERAPY. Let's do this thing!

And it was just what the doctor ordered. I did edit the recipe unexpectedly. For the white chocolate buttercream (which is just for the inside), you split it and mix half with reduced raspberries and it was just SO PRETTY with the natural pink color and raspberry flecks. And also there was plenty of buttercream so the idea of making a second buttercream (that used 4 sticks of butter) seemed like a lot so I figured I'd skip that step. I also decorated differently; instead of placing candy melt hearts all over the cake, I just put 4 on the top (varying sizes to represent our little family) + fresh raspberries. I love it. It makes me happy just looking at it.