flower surprise inside cake with dried pineapple flower topper for mother's day

Since I didn't do any baking at all during our month in Hawaii, I decided to show you the cake that I made for Mother's Day back in May.  After seeing this post at Tide and Thyme on making dried pineapple flowers as cupcake toppers, I had decided that I wanted to try making some to decorate a cake instead!  I followed this tutorial at Annie's Eats, and ended up with these beautiful dried pineapple flowers!

For the cake, I wanted a simple vanilla cake, but with a twist - I wanted it to have a red velvet flower "surprise" inside the cake!  To do this, I baked up a red velvet cake and then let it firm up in the fridge.  Then I used a flower shaped cookie cutter to cut out my flower shapes.

Next I made a vanilla cake using this recipe at Sweetapolita, filled up the cake pans halfway with batter, and then dropped in the red velvet flowers before filling the cake pans with the rest of the batter! (I actually first saw this technique at A Cup of Sugar A Pinch of Salt)

After the cake layers were baked and cooled, I filled it with fresh strawberries and whipped cream, since I wanted something light and airy and not too sweet, and then frosted it with whipped cream as well.

Finally I added a piped beaded border on the bottom, and finished it off with a dried pineapple flower!

And the best part about the cake, the surprise inside!

Happy belated Mother's Day! :)