I Made A Valentine's Day Cake With A Great British Bake Off Recipe

I am the Valentine's Day Star Baker.

The abundance of sweets, lovable and wholesome contestants, and entertaining banter make the Great British Bake Off one of my favorite feel-good television shows. While I enjoy watching their beautiful saccharine creations come to life, most of the recipes seem unattainable and totally elusive to me. Nonetheless, I have always wanted to attempt one anyway. With Valentine's Day coming, it seemed like a perfect time to make a sugar-filled treat!

I headed over to the GBBO website, filtered their rolodex of recipes to the "easy" setting, and selected this raspberry-jam-filled Vanilla Sponge Cake from the illustrious Series 10 winner, David Atherton. The red raspberry sounded delicious and very Valentine's Day appropriate.

However, as a disclaimer, I am a mediocre baker at worst and an amateur baker at a very generous best. Following any of my advice could produce monstrous results, so take everything I say with a grain of salt—or rather a pinch of sugar. I just made this for some delectable, Valentine's Day fun!

I gathered my ingredients and got started! I found that, hands down, the most difficult part of this recipe was converting the grams and milliliters into measurements that suited my American measuring cups. In the end, Google and The Calculator Site were enormously helpful.

Making the actual batter wasn't too bad, but I soon realized that I didn't have enough butter in my fridge. If you ever run into this problem, substituting oil usually does the trick, and it worked just fine for this cake.

I popped the cake tins into the oven, and although the recipe says to bake them for 20-25 minutes, I ended up having to bake them for upwards of 35 because they were still raw in the middle. And yes, I definitely did the thing where I listened to see if my cakes were boiling inside like Val Stones in Series 7.

In the meantime, I worked on getting the decoration prepared. To give the cake a more festive twist, I made some heart cutouts that I could put on top of the cake while I dusted it with sugar. This would generate a cute heart pattern!

Afterward, I got started with filling. I have never made a whipped cream before, and I was so amazed that it was as simple as using some heavy cream and the whisk attachment on my hand mixer. However, I did wish I added some vanilla extract or extra sugar because it was not very sweet and relatively bland. Its texture still worked with the cake as a whole, though!

Ensuring the cakes are fully cooled is vital, and I do wish I waited a bit longer to put everything together. My whipped cream melted a little, my jam started to pour out, and my top sponge started to slide slightly, but I can assure you that the cake is still in tact as I am writing this! I just used a knife and spoon to fix it.

Overall, decorating the cake was a whole lot of fun. My paper cutout hearts made for a precious Valentine's Day design, and my last-minute fresh-raspberry addition complimented the jam inside!

With that, my Valentine's Day cake was complete! As soon as I finished my first piece, I was waiting for my handshake from Paul Hollywood and for Prue Leith to tell me it was worth the calories.

The jam adds a bite of tartness and some sweetness, while the sponge is not too sugary. A success! My experience with cake is usually from a box, and making it from scratch was so rewarding. David's recipe was clear, not terribly difficult, and most of all, tasty! If you need me over the next few days, I will exclusively be eating cake and waiting for Paul Hollywood and Prue Leith to DM me that I won Star Baker or that they want to send me a celebratory cake stand. Happy Valentine's Day!