cherry vanilla hello kitty bow birthday cake

After my recent obsession with making dark cherry ice cream, I decided to include those same cherry flavors in the birthday cake that I baked for myself this year! So I baked up my favorite vanilla cake recipe, and waited for them to cool before slicing them in half horizontally.

I've seen cake recipes before which use a simple syrup brushed over the cake layers, in order to keep the cake moist and add extra flavor.  Since I had cherry syrup leftover from when I drained homemade candied cherries for the dark cherry ice cream, I decided to brush the cherry syrup onto my cake layers.  And then I topped each cake layer with cherry whipped cream (freshly whipped cream with the same cherry syrup added to it).

Then I colored the rest of the frosting a soft pink, did a quick crumb coat and a smooth final coat of frosting, and added a quick shell border to the top and bottom of the cake.

At the time (I made this cake in April and only now got around to posting it!), my newborn was only 2 months old, so the decoration had to be simple given my limited time.  I simply added some rainbow sprinkles, and piped on a quick Hello Kitty bow (my favorite part of last year's birthday cake).

When I cut into the cake, I was dismayed to find that the cherry syrup had turned a purple-blue color, instead of the lovely shade of burgundy that I had brushed on!  But it did add more cherry flavor to the overall cake, as the amount of cherry syrup in the whipped cream was barely detectable.

Happy (belated) birthday to all of you April babies out there!

*** Update:
You can now find the recipe for a strawberries and cream version of this cake in my new book, "The Hello Kitty Baking Book"! Enjoy!