Hidden Heart Loaf Cake | Surprise Inside Valentine Special Pound Cake

Kids have been asking for heart shaped treat for this Valentine, they are also at home on 5 day school break, so we decided to make this surprise hidden heart cake and some homemade chocolates today to share with their friends near by. The loaf/pound cake takes time to bake and need to follow little trick to make it perfect. But it’s worth for the hard work. Until you slice the loaf, it’s a real surprise how it turns:-). This is my first experience with hidden heart loaf; so I too was surprised to see the perfect

hearts in each slice. The only thing is that the edge slices made smaller hearts so make sure to even the batter and tap well before start baking.

Ingredients for Hidden Heart Loaf Cake

Pink Heart Cake
All Purpose Flour – 2 Cups/240gms
Unsalted butter, softened – 1 Cup/2 Sticks/225grams
Sugar – 170gms/3/4 Cup (You can use up to 1 Cup)
Large Eggs – 4 Numbers
Baking Powder – 1tsp
Cocoa Powder – 3 Tbsp
Milk – 20ml (For cake batter consistency)
Salt – 1/2tsp
Vanilla Extract – 1.5tsp
Red food coloring – ½tsp

Vanilla Cake
All Purpose Flour – 2 Cups/240gms
Unsalted butter, softened – 1 Cup/2 Sticks/225gms
Sugar – 170g rams/3/4 Cup (Use upto 1 Cup)
Large Eggs – 4 Numbers
Baking Powder – 1tsp
Vanilla Extract – 1.5tsp
Salt – 1/2tsp

Icing
Icing Sugar – 1/2 Cup
Water – As needed to make thick consistency
Piping Bag

My Loaf Pan size is 9X5 Inch
Recipe Adapted From Here

CAKE Preparation

Grease a loaf tin with butter and flour or line a baking parchment.
Mix together flour, baking powder, cocoa and the salt (Pic 1), then keep aside.
Preheat oven to 350 F.
Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy.
Add one egg at a time, mixing well after each addition.
Now add the flour mixture in batches (Pic 2).
Then food color to the batter, then mix until evenly colored.
Finally add vanilla extract and blend well.
If needed add the milk and make right consistency batter.
Pour into the prepared loaf tin (Pic 4) and bake for 50 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean (Pic 5).
Cool for 10 mins in the tin, then transfer to a wire rack.
When cool completely (may take 1 hour), cut the cake into even slices (Pic 6).

Using a 2.5 Inch cookie cutter, stamp out the hearts (Pic 6 and 7), also for the stale slices you may need a small inch cookie cutter (The remaining cake crumbs you can use it to make cake pops, I made so for kids :-)).
Keep the heart cuts in freezer till you use, so you can prevent crumbs and breaks while arranging it later in the loaf tin.

How to make Hidden Heart Loaf Cake

Repeat the above steps to make Vanilla Loaf Cake batter (Pic 8), just skip cocoa powder and food color in this batch.
Pour 3⁄4 of the mixture into the prepared loaf tin (Pic 9).
Push the bottoms of the hearts into the batter in a tightly packed row (Pic 10).

Spoon over the remaining cake mixture, covering as much of the hearts as possible and level the top batter (Pic 11).
Bake for 50 minutes to 1 hr or until a skewer comes out clean (Pic 12).

Cool for 10 mins in the tin, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.
For the icing, mix sugar and water to thick consistency (Pic 13), make small hole in the piping bag and make patterns over loaf (Pic 14).
Decorate with some sprinkles, if using.