Happy belated Valentine's day!

I hope you all had a loved up day!

Mine was full of shopping (for food, not that exciting), baking and cooking. And the always working Mr. Bossy managed to come home at a reasonable time to appreciate cakes and one of his favourite meals.

I love my cakes - so pretty.

Red food colouring is notoriously the worst of all and as I am the proud mother of a highly energetic toddler (a friend dubbed him the cannon ball child) it's really not something I want to give him voluntarily. These cakes look amazingly pink but it's all natural! We love beetroot!

The recipe is my trusted favourite cake recipe - blogged about HERE, just substitute the bananas with grated beetroot (I used 2 pre-cooked beetroots) and added about 1-2 teaspoons vanilla extract (1-2 because I nearly dropped the bottle and it overflowed...). The dough itself was a vibrant raspberry pink but when baked it looked rather golden with pink speckles. They do taste nice but I personally prefer beetroot in combination with chocolate - yummy. Blogged about HERE.

The icing contains about a ton of sugar so not all healthy cakes - but never mind. The recipe is taken from THIS lovely book:

110g unsalted butter, at room temperature

60ml semi-skimmed milk, at room temperature

500g icing sugar, sifted

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

I substituted some of the milk with beetroot juice - how much is utterly up to you. I think I used at least a good 20ml and they came out such a vibrant pink - but you cannot taste it.

Whisk all together until smooth and ice the fully cooled cakes with a palette knife. If you have any decoration put it on the minute you iced the cake as it hardens up fairly fast. The red hearts are shop bought and do propably contain artificial colouring - my son had a cake with only one heart on it and I suppose he'll live!

I love baking anyway - but themed baking is even better!

When I woke up yesterday morning this was waiting for me in the lounge.

That was a lovely surprise which I did not expect at all. My child was nearly hyperventilating and could hardly contain himself and then told me all about it that they bought this at the shop! According to Mr. Bossy the great big balloon was Bossy juniors idea. Now who would have thought that!