14 Unique Heart Cake Ideas Perfect For A Birthday (For Beginner And Pro Bakers).

Looking for Heart Cake Ideas? Whether you’re simply looking for inspiration to place an order with your local baker, or whether you want to recreate one of these cakes yourself, you’re in the perfect place. Here you’ll find 14 Heart cake ideas perfect for a birthday, Valentine’s Day, or any kind of celebration, including easy designs with instructions to recreate these beautiful cake designs.

How to find a heart cake idea suited to your cake-decorating level?

I’ve come up with a system. The cake ideas are presented to you according to their level of difficulty. There are three categories :

What Are Beginner Cake Ideas?

These are easy cake ideas. If you’ve never decorated a cake before (or only did it once or twice), these are the cakes that you should pay attention to.

• What you’ll find: Beautiful cake ideas that only require basic cake decorating techniques. This is a great place to start your journey.

What Are Intermediate Cake Ideas?

Low Intermediate Baker: If you are confident that you’ve mastered the cake decorating basics, such as how to smooth a cake, but feel like you still have a lot of techniques to learn apart from this foundation, this category is perfect for you.

• What you’ll find: Heart cake ideas that require both basic decorating skills and one or two techniques that are a little bit more advanced. This is a great place to grow your cake-decorating skills.

High Intermediate Baker: If you’ve mastered both basic techniques and several more advanced cake decorating techniques, these cake ideas are made for you.

• What you’ll find: Stunning cake ideas that can be fairly challenging, but are a great place to get even better than you already are.

What Are Advanced Cake Ideas?

If you consider yourself an experienced cake decorator and have mastered most of the decorating techniques, including the use of fondant, then this is the perfect place for you.

• What you’ll find: Showstopping and challenging cake ideas, perfect to sharpen and maintain your skills.

The Grading System

Finally, I’ve also assigned a grade of difficulty to each cake inspiration: 1/5 being the easiest design and 5/5 being the hardest. The goal is to make the ranking the most accurate possible. You will find this to be particularly helpful if you happen to fall in the Beginner or the Intermediate Cake Ideas categories.

Growth Tip : This list is great a place to set goals about your cake decorating skills. Pin this post and come back later to tell us how far you’ve come in your cake decorating journey !

How to recreate these heart cake ideas?

What cake recipe should you use to make your perfect cake come true?

To recreate these cake ideas, you will need a trustworthy cake recipe. You have several options.

Adapt your favorite cake recipe.

There are a lot of ways to adapt a cake recipe. You mainly have four options to tweak your favorite recipe :

• You could change the flavor of your cake recipe: with citrus zest, the essence of your choice, or turn it into a chocolate or carrot cake for example.
• You could add a filling: a caramel sauce, a homemade flavored whipped cream, ganache, or buttercream.
• You could also add some texture: oreo bits, crumble crumbs, nuts, or fresh fruit for example.
• Finally, you could personalize your frosting.

A great flavor combination for a heart cake would be a moist chocolate cake, paired with strawberry filling, and covered with vanilla buttercream.

Be careful, if you’re a beginner baker, having to figure out both your cake design and creating a new cake recipe could be overwhelming. Therefore, I always recommend taking your learning journey one step at a time.

Look for a cake recipe.

Where? You can ask friends, or family or simply look on the internet. You have to keep two things in mind though :

• The recipe has to be suitable for cake decorating, especially for cakes that require stacking or carving (intermediate and advanced cake ideas).
• Once again, if you’re a beginner baker, be careful not to put too much on your plate and choose a recipe suited to your current level.

Use my cake recipe recommendation.

Finally, you could try the delicious recipe I recommend. I firmly believe everyone should have a trustworthy chocolate cake recipe, and my chocolate cake with cream cheese frosting is perfect for beginners. I’m sure you’ll love it.

What you will love about this recipe :

• It has a perfect chocolate flavor.
• It’s a really easy recipe, perfect for beginners.
• It has a great texture.

How to follow the instructions of the designs.

For the cake designs in the beginner category: I’ll provide written instructions on how to recreate the cake idea presented to you. Don’t hesitate to watch video tutorials about the basic techniques such as how to smooth a cake.

For the designs in the intermediate category: I’ll provide some guidance on how to perform the more complicated techniques.

For the advanced category: you are an experienced baker, at this point, and you will find great opportunities to put this experience to use. To be completely honest, I cannot make myself several cake ideas from the advanced category, so trust your abilities and go for it.

Find the perfect heart cake idea for your baking skills.

Growth Tip : If you aim to get better at cake decorating, you should choose a cake idea that feels sligthly above your current cake decorating level. Get out of your comfort zone !

Heart Cake Ideas Perfect for Beginner Bakers

Here, you’ll find 4 easy heart cake ideas perfect for beginner bakers.

Bento Heart Cake.

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Difficulty Level: 1/5.

What you will need:

• Enough frosting to cover and decorate your cake
• A piping bag with a thin round piping tip (or simply cut your piping bag straight, 1/2 cm or 1/4 inch from the tip).

How to recreate this cake?

1. For the cover. First, you must crumb-coat the cake to avoid any crumbs in your final design. Apply a thin and even coat of frosting with your offset spatula all around your cake.
2. Smooth it with your bench scraper, holding it at a 45-degree angle on the cake while spinning your turntable. Your bench scraper isn’t supposed to move, only turn the table.
3. It doesn’t have to be perfect as it only is the first coat. Chill the cake 20 to 30 minutes in the fridge (until your frosting sets).
4. Then, apply a thicker coat of frosting and repeat the smoothing operation. Fill in any gaps and smooth the cake again. Repeat this operation until the cake looks smooth enough for you. Here, you’ll find a video tutorial of the covering process, if needed.
5. For the writing. If you’re not used to writing with buttercream, use a toothpick or the tip of a knife to trace where you’re going to write.
6. Then, chill your cake for 30 minutes or until your buttercream cover sets, so it doesn’t get damaged in case you have trouble with the next step.
7. Now, you can retrace the imprint you made on your buttercream. If you’d like to practice beforehand, you can always do so on a sheet of parchment paper until you’re confident enough.

What you’ve learned :

Writing on cakes with buttercream is an essential cake-decorating skill. While it’s not really complicated, it does require some practice.

Black Heart Cake

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Difficulty Level: 1/5.

What you will need :

• Enough frosting to cover and decorate your cake.
• Fresh (wrap the stems in floral tape) or fake flowers

How to recreate this cake?

1. For the cover of the cake. First, you must crumb-coat the cake to avoid any crumbs in your final design. Apply a thin and even coat of frosting with your offset spatula all around your cake.
2. Smooth it with your bench scraper, holding it at a 45-degree angle on the cake while spinning your turntable. Your bench scraper isn’t supposed to move, only turn the table.
3. It doesn’t have to be perfect as it only is the first coat. Chill the cake 20 to 30 minutes (until your frosting sets) in the fridge.
4. Then, apply a thicker coat of frosting and repeat the smoothing operation. Fill in any gaps and smooth the cake again. Repeat this operation until the cake looks smooth enough for you.
5. Chill your cake again for 30 minutes.
6. Cut the top edges of the cake with a hot knife to get sharp edges. Here, you’ll find a video tutorial of the covering process, if needed.
7. For the flowers. Simply wrap their stems if you’re using fresh flowers, and stab them into your cake just like in the picture.

What you’ve learned :

Adding flowers to your cake really takes your design to a superior level, without too much effort.

Buttercream borders are basic and easy techniques that even beginners can master.

I Love You Cake

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Difficulty Level: 1,5/5

What you will need :

• Enough frosting to cover and decorate your cake
• White chocolate
• Silicon alphabet mold.

How to recreate this cake?

1. For the cover of the cake. Cover your cake with buttercream, as explained in the previous designs.
2. For the buttercream shell border. Hold the piping bag at a 45-degree angle next to the cake’s bottom edge.
3. Squeeze the piping bag to release the icing, and pull the bag away while releasing pressure forming a shell shape.
4. Keep piping shells to form a border around the cake. Maintain a consistent angle and pressure for uniform shells.
5. Remember, you can always practice on a sheet of parchment paper before piping on the actual cake. To get more clarity you can watch this quick shell border tutorial.
6. For the chocolate letters. Melt the chocolate using a double boiler or microwave, stirring frequently to ensure a smooth consistency.
7. Transfer the melted chocolate into a piping bag. and pipe it into the letter molds.
8. Tap the molds gently on the counter to remove any air bubbles. Smooth the surface of the chocolate.
9. Chill the chocolate in the refrigerator (30 minutes) or freezer (5-10 minutes) to allow the chocolate to set. Here, you’ll find a video tutorial of the process, if needed.
10. Once the chocolate has set, carefully remove the letters from the molds, and place them on your cake with your fingers or kitchen tweezers.

What you’ve learned :

Buttercream shell borders are an effortless and elegant way to elevate the look of your cake.

If you’re looking for more easy cake ideas centered around love, check out my post about Valentine’s Day Cake Ideas.

Heart Cake Ideas for Intermediate Bakers

Here, you’ll find 6 heart cake ideas perfect for intermediate bakers.

Tiny Hearts Cake

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Difficulty Level: 2/5 (Low-Intermediate)

If you’d like to go full-on with the heart theme, this tiny hearts cake is exactly what you need.

A little guidance

To recreate this cute heart pattern, you can use a thin round piping tip (similar to the number 7 or number 6 by Wilton) or simply cut straight the tip of your piping bag. You can watch this very quick tutorial to learn how to recreate these cute buttercream hearts.

Comic Heart Cake

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Difficulty Level: 2,5/5 (Low-Intermediate)

If you’re looking for an original cake design or something that stands out from the crowd without being too difficult, this cake is perfect for you.

A little guidance

Cartoon cakes are all about layers. To recreate this effect, make sure each layer is perfectly set before moving on to the next one.

Romantic Heart Cake

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Difficulty level: 3/5 (Intermediate)

If you’re looking for a heart cake both romantic and refreshing, this is the cake for you. It would also perfectly suit a spring birthday.

A little guidance

Don’t forget to wrap the stems of your flowers if you’re using fresh ones.

Pink And Violet Heart Cake.

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Difficulty Level: 3,5/5 (High-Intermediate)

If you’re a buttercream lover, this cake design is going to satisfy your craving.

A little guidance

This type of cake can be challenging if you’re not comfortable with the use of buttercream. To get a neater finish, you can delimit with a toothpick (or the tip of a knife) where you want your buttercream to end.

Painted Buttercream Heart Cake

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Difficulty Level: 4/5 (High-Intermediate)

If looking for an artsy kind of cake, you’re going to love this design.

A little guidance

When making this type of painted cake, there are two things you should keep in mind. Less is more. And, always make sure your previous buttercream layer is set before moving on.

Vintage Heart Cake

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Difficulty Level: 4/5 (High-Intermediate)

Vintage heart cakes are everywhere these days, so if you’re looking for a trendy heart cake design, this is the one.

A little guidance

This kind of cake doesn’t require any complicated techniques (mostly buttercream borders and ruffles). But, you have to be as consistent as possible which can be quite challenging. So, as I always say, don’t hesitate to practice your piping on parchment paper, before moving to the actual cake.

Heart Cake Ideas for Advanced Bakers

These heart cake designs will be perfectly suited to experienced cake decorators.

Naked Heart Cake

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Difficulty Level: 5/5

If you’re looking for an elegant cake design, this is the one for you. It will require considerable effort though, especially if you’re using homemade macarons.

Buttercream Bouquet Heart Cake

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Difficulty level: 5/5

This beautiful bouquet heart cake will require a lot of work. Buttercream flowers can be tedious but the end result is completely worth it.

Standing Heart Cake

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Difficulty Level: 5/5

This standing heart is the perfect cake if what you’re looking for is a memorable cake design.

Did you enjoy these heart cake inspirations? Sharing is caring!

Please let me know in the comments and/or tag me on Instagram @theperfectcakeidea. I’d love to see your creations. And, don’t forget to pin this post so you can come back to it.

Pin this post and come back to it later.