My Valentine

Valentine's Day is one of my favorites because it means I have an excuse to make something especially cutesy and cheesey for my man!  As I was walking down the card isle of Duane Reade pharmacy in NYC, searching for the perfect 'I Love You' card, a sweet, sophisted, and sparkly pair of birds caught my eye.  While the message inside the card was quite dear, the fact that the front design would make an AWESOME cake was the reason my man opened a sparkly love birds card this Valentine's Day!

The card inspired cake was made up of thin layers of chocolate cake soaked with Kahlua and layered between Starbucks coffee buttercream and nutella ganache.  It is covered in vanilla fondant and decorated with fondant cut outs and royal icing doilies decor.  A 'manly' touch of red sparkle was added just to the birds' wings.

Ever since my Francisco and I met, I have had the same nickname for him.  I don't know why or how, but for some reason I endearingly call him my 'Goose'.  Sometimes its prefixed by 'silly', but usually he's just my sweet and simple 'Goose'.  My Valentine gift to him this year were decorated sugar cookies inspired bu this unique nickname.

I hand cut each of the Goose cookies and then decorated them with grayy royal icing (using the outline and flood method).  Black royal icing details of feet, wings, beaks and eyes were then added.  To add a little cutesy love to the cookies I then added a sparkly red royal icing heart I had piped separately and covered in red disco dust.  These cookies came out super cute and sure did put a smile on my Goose's face and gave him a happy Valentine's belly! (=