Today I am showing you how to make the world’s largest conversation heart! These candy hearts are the quintessential candy available around Valentine’s day.
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Now before we get too far into this, I am definitely not a lover of candy hearts. BUT, with that said, I love how they look!! And I love the messages. I knew that if I figured out how to make them, my recipe would be better than the original version. You can make your giant candy heart any color and flavour. I used pink and cherry flavouring- and it was delicious.
Arranging the candy hearts in the pattern you see gave me SUCH satisfaction. I love the end result of perfection. The candy hearts just flow into each other perfectly.
Hiding inside the cake is colored heart shaped cake. Using my twice baked method, I hid a row of pink and a row of purple hearts into the vanilla cake batter. The hidden hearts are optional, but they definitely add to the surprise during cutting the cake.
Giant Conversation Heart
Ingredients:
- ¾ teaspoon unflavoured gelatin
- ¼ cup clear soda (ginger ale, Sprite, 7-up etc)
- 2- 3 cups icing sugar
- Candy flavouring
- Gel paste
- Edible writing pen
Procedure:
- Combine soda and gelatin in a microwavable container. Stir to combine. Heat in the microwave in 30 second intervals until gelatin crystals have dissolved.
- In a large bowl, combine 2 cups of icing sugar, gelatin mixture, flavouring and gel paste. Stir to combine. Add additional ½ cups of icing sugar until mixture is no longer sticky. It should feel like fondant.
- Shape into a heart and insert a dowel into the bottom. Set aside to dry 24-48 hours.
- Write message on heart with an edible writer once heart is dry.
Adding the flowers to the top of the cake was a last minute addition during my decorating. The cake looked cute with the candy on the top, but it was missing something. Paul to the rescue- flowers! So I went out and grabbed some cheap and easy to find flowers (carnations) and added them to the top. Make sure your ends are clean and free of any chemicals. If you are super worried about that, you can wrap the stems in syran wrap, and put down a cardboard cake board in between the flowers and cake below. The flowers will hide the board.
Giant Conversation Heart Cake for Valentine’s Day
Ingredients and Materials:
- 6-8 cups Vanilla cake batter colored white
- 2 Prepared 6” vanilla cakes colored pink and purple
- Pink vanilla buttercream
- Conversation Hearts Giant conversation heart (recipe above)
- Pink and white carnations
Procedure:
- Preheat oven to 350F. Prepare 2, 6” cake pans with non-stick spray and parchment paper.
- Prepare pink and purple 6” round cakes and allow to cool completely. Slice into wedges and remove a heart shape from each wedge.
- Place one cup of vanilla cake batter in the bottom of each pans. Place heart wedges into the pans to form at least one ring of cake in each pan. Fill the outer edge and center with cake batter. Ensure that the colored cake pieces are entirely covered with cake batter. Place pans into the oven to bake for 55-60 minutes. Once baked, place cake on a cooling rack for 5 minutes before removing cake from the pan.
- Allow the cakes to cool completely before leveling. Attach one cake layer to a cake board with a swipe of buttercream. Spread a thin layer of pink buttercream between the two layers and stack the second layer on top of the first. Once the two layers are stacked, cover the entire cake in pink buttercream.
- Arrange the conversation hearts in twos of matching color and arrange around the bottom of the cake. When once around the cake is complete, start the next row by offsetting the hearts between the ones below. Cover the entire cake with the hearts.
- Place carnations around the top of the cake, and insert the giant conversation heart into the cake.
- Cake is best consumed within 2-3 days and should be kept in a sealed container in the fridge.
