At stores usually they have two kinds of pitted dark sweet cherries in syrup, either in a can or a jar, you can use either.

Step 1: Cake and Cream

For the cake:

1 2/3 cups flour

3/4 cup sugar

1 tsp salt

1 tsp baking soda

1/4 cup water

3/4 cup water from dark cherry can/jar

1 tsp vinegar

1 tsp vanilla essence

1/2 cup plain yogurt/sour cream

Mix together dry ingredients. Combine wet ingredients and add to dry. Mix well. Pour into 7 inch round pan and bake at 350 F for 30 or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool on rack.

This makes 1 cake. You can slice them in half and stack, but I prefer a taller cake, so I make another one with exact recipe.

For the buttercream:

5 egg whites (you can use pasteurized or freshly cracked)

1 1/4 c sugar

1 block of butter (454 g)

1 tsp vanilla essence

On double boiler, heat egg whites and sugar until dissolved and hot to the touch (160 F). Pour into a mixer bowl, let it rotate on low medium speed until room temperature then turn up to high and beat until meringue state.

Add in butter a little at a time and whip until fluffy and creamy, then beat in vanilla essence.

Step 2: Assembling Cake and Cream

On your cake stand or cake board, dab a little cream and place 1 cake, so cake wont move around.

Pipe/spread cream on cake and top with dark cherry from the can/jar (without the syrup), then stack with the other cake. Cover the whole with buttercream.

For decoration, open 1-2 rice krispies square and crunch it together and press it into the heart cookie cutter. You can just cut the rice krispies square with cookie cutter, but I find them to be too crumbly unlike when you make your own rice krispies cake! You can then paint it with liquid food color OR you can mix it in while crunching the rice krispies together (use gloves if you don't want to stain your hands! - of course the food color is washable tho :)

Insert a toothpick on the bottom of the heart and press this heart into the center of the cake as shown.

For the family birds, I use fondant, colored in blue and pink (presenting my husband and my sons, are blue birds and me with the pink bird). For each bird, I insert spaghetti on them and press them on the cake and to the heart. The ones for the heart, I also dab teeny tiny buttercream so they would stick to the heart.