Sweetheart Chocolate Cake (and lots of book details!!)

This Sweetheart Chocolate Cake has my favorite cake & frosting combination The cake is perfect for Valentine's Day. With chocolate cake and chocolate frosting and chocolate ganache, you will not find a more delicious, rich cake!

I'm also sharing the Table of Contents (with lots of details) from my book, Cake Decorating for Beginners... so keep reading!

This Sweetheart Chocolate Cake is one of the last cakes featured in my new book, Cake Decorating for Beginners. It's also maybe the most mouth-watering cake included.

I'll share some links below, but if you order the book, you'll get every imaginable detail for how to make this cake. I share every recipe, every frosting tip, every step-by-step picture in a tutorial ... everything you'll need to make this cake.

Speaking of my book, I've been meaning to share more details from it. Recently someone asked me if I'd share the Table of Contents and I hadn't thought to do that... until today! This post will give you a really clear picture of what you'll get when you buy the book, so here goes...

Cake Decorating for Beginners Table of Contents:

The book includes 6 chapters, as you can see in the pic and I'm going to break them down and give you all the bits and pieces.

• Chapter One: Getting Ready. This chapter is loaded with so much foundational information - you're going to want to soak it all up. Included is an exhaustive list of equipment and tools for cake decorating. I even separate the "must-haves" from the "will make things easier" tools. Then there are explanations for all of the types of coloring available, ideas for toppers you can use, and a great tip for using fresh fruit!
• Chapter Two: Prep Basics. This chapter includes two from-scratch cake recipes. From there I share a quick tutorial for covering your boards, step-by-step pics for how to level and torte cakes, and even a short tutorial for carving a sheet cake.
• Chapter Three: Frosting Basics. The third chapter one of my favorites. It includes three frosting recipes (and several ideas for variations) plus charts for making some unique colors and how much frosting you'll need for different cake sizes. I also have critical tutorials for filling and frosting cakes. Plus the first three full-length cake tutorials, including the cake on the book cover. Here you can get an idea of how many pictures and details are included in each tutorial:

Step by Step Picture Tutorials.

• Chapter Four: Piping Basics. Chapter 4 starts with lots of information on pastry bags, and how to use them (picture instructions). Then pages and pages of details on piping tips, common techniques, and troubleshooting help. This was probably the hardest chapter for me to write, but might easily be the most important one for a new cake decorator. Included in this chapter are three more full-length cake tutorials.... including one of my favorite cakes in the book:

• Chapter 5: Fondant Basics. In this chapter, I share my homemade marshmallow fondant recipe plus a picture tutorial for coloring it. I go on to share lots of tips and helps for common problems with fondant. I also include a chart for how much you'll need to cover cakes and tutorials for actually doing that. There are two full cake tutorials in this chapter - one for a super cool geometric cake and another for a small wedding cake.
• Chapter 6: Chocolate Basics. Last, but certainly not least, chocolate. Here I share a recipe for Chocolate Ganache and picture tutorials for covering a cake with ganache. I also have a tutorial for doing the super popular drip cakes (with chocolate ganache or white candy drips) and the final two cake tutorials.

If you can't tell from everything I've shared, Cake Decorating for Beginners could not be more perfectly titled. I seriously tried to think of every possible detail a new cake decorator would need to learn to decorate cakes. And I showed you how to do it with real-life examples.

Now, back to where we started.

The Sweetheart Chocolate Cake Details:

• It's a chocolate cake filled with vanilla buttercream, then covered in chocolate ganache.
• I colored some of the vanilla buttercream with Tulip Red gel coloring and I whipped some of the ganache until it was fluffy, then I used those frostings to pipe the decorations and border on the cake.
• The piping tip used for all piped decorations was the Wilton 1M.
• The cake was on a gold cake board and I accented with gold sugar pearls, gold sixlets, and gold stars.
• Need the heart template for this cake? Subscribe to my emails and I'll send it to you!

Alrighty... that's all I have for you! I'd love for you to order a copy of my book here. Or if you'd like buy a signed copy, shoot me an email at rose(at)rosebakes(dot)com and I'll tell you how you can get one!