A Vday treat for my sweetie

For Valentine's Day this year Mike made dinner and I took on dessert. I knew right away what I wanted to make. I'd been waiting for the right occasion to try my hand at an Italian Cream Cake, the cake flavor we chose for our wedding cake.

I spent some time researching online and chose a recipe I found on foodnetwork.com posted by Emeril Lagasse.

After buying three new 9" cake pans and gathering all the ingredients needed, I began making my first, not out of a box, cake.

After mixing everything on the correct order I divided my batter into three pans.



While the cake was baking I worked on my own variation. Our wedding cake had a cherry filling, so I picked up some raspberry preserves and boiled them in an amateur attempt to strain the seeds. I then realized the seeds would slip right through a pasta strainer. O, well. It removed a few of the seeds. I figured it would still work.



I let the cakes cool for 10 minutes in the pan....



Success!



After cooling I started frosting my layers.



I only added the preserves on one layer, I didn't want the raspberry to be too overwhelming. I added a frosting layer on top of the preserves too.




I threw on the top layer.



And frosted sparingly. A few of the reviewers said they doubled the frosting recipe but I didn't find it necessary. Double would have been too much. I did use every last drop though!



Finally we went for it! An excellent Valentine's Day treat!