Bake your own heart-shaped cake – recipe idea with strawberries, no heart-shaped pan required

Preparation time: approx. 1 hour and 20 minutes

Baking time: approx. 30 minutes

Instructions for the heart-shaped Mother's Day cake

1. Line a springform tin (24 cm) with baking paper. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees (top/bottom heat).

2. Beat the eggs, sugar and vanilla sugar with the whisk of a food processor on the highest setting for approx. 7 - 10 mins. until thick and creamy. After 5 minutes, add the salt and continue beating.

3. Mix the flour, vanilla custard powder and baking powder and sieve into the egg mixture in two portions and fold in very carefully.

4. Pour the batter into the springform tin and bake in the preheated oven for about 30 minutes until golden brown. Do not forget to test with a skewer. Take out of the oven, remove from the tin and leave to cool on a cooling rack.

1. Clean, wash, drain and dice the strawberries.

2. Mix the mascarpone with the milk, quark and sugar until creamy. Briefly beat in the cream stabiliser.

3. Whip the cream until stiff, adding the vanilla sugar. Carefully fold the cream into the mascarpone and quark cream.

4. Cut the sponge cake in half horizontally twice, place the bottom cake layer on a cake plate and surround with a cake ring.

5. Spread half of the cream over the first base. Place the second cake layer on top. Spread the rest of the cream on top, place the last cake layer on top, cover and leave to set in the fridge overnight.

1. For the frosting, beat the mascarpone, cream, cream stabiliser and vanilla sugar until creamy. Colour pink.

2. Carefully remove the cake from the tin.

3. Use a sharp knife to cut a mark at the top, bottom, left and right.

4. Cut from the left and right to the centre at the bottom to form the tip of the heart. Cut out a small triangle at the marking at the top.

5. Coat the top of the cake (at the heart roundings) with the frosting. Then carefully place the two cut pieces of the heart tip against the heart roundings and press down to optimise the shape of the rounding. The frosting ensures that the attached pieces hold better.

You can of course also make a heart template the same size as the cake, place it on the cake and cut out the heart. The cake will then be smaller, but you can eat the sections straight away ;)

6. Fill the remaining frosting into a piping bag with a star-shaped nozzle. Decorate the cake with cream tufts, strawberry quarters and sugar pearls and give as a gift or chill until ready to eat.