gluten Free Valentines day cake

Valentine's Day is just around the corner, I can't believe its almost here. Last month I did a test run for a Valentines cake. Originally I was going to make them cupcakes and try that marble trick so they would be heart shaped but I didn't have any cupcake liners, so I just made it a round cake, maybe next week I'll do the cupcakes.

I've been trying to stay away from over processed foods and color dyes and I had a great idea to substitute some water in the recipe for  beet juice to give it a more festive color, I remember some vegan recipe's doing that and thought it would be worth a try.

I had some white cake mix on hand and the eggs are from my chickens, seeing as I was coloring the cake anyway I kept the yolks (if you take out the yolks and only use the whites you get a whiter cake).

I love bob's red mill mixes for when I'm not feeling like experimenting with my own mixtures, I try and keep some in the pantry for those lazy days. This definitely had been one of those days, I just wanted to eat the cake, not make it.

I juiced my beets and added water to get the remaining amount needed for the recipe, totaling 1/2 cup, the other 1/2 is oil.

My sister helped me with the cake and loved the contrast in colors.

My pans prepped with wax paper on the bottom. (new spring forms I got for Christmas)

And with the batter added. Now that is some awesome color! It looked like something in Willy Wonka's chocolate room, I loved it!

But sadly it didn't last, it's still a nice pink/red, but if you look closely you can see it's speckled that way, the color didn't uniform the cake or 'dye' everything.

I made a cream cheese frosting (because I love cream cheese frosting) and topped the cake. It's really just cream cheese, powdered sugar and a splash of milk, simple and delicious (at least if you like cream cheese).

After cutting a slice you can see how little of that beautiful color is left.

It still was festive and tasty but not what I expected, I'm going to play around with it next time, or maybe put the beet juice in the frosting... and make it a chocolate cake, yummy...