Cook your way to your partner's heart this Valentine's Day with a tricolour cake

How would you express to someone that they mean the world to you? Personally, I believe the most effective manner of doing this is through gifts from the heart, ones that require a lot of effort and dedication. And if they're edible afterwards — even better! After all, the phrase "the way to a man's heart is through his stomach" didn't emerge from nowhere.

For Valentine's Day, create an impressive cake in three colours for your partner. How does one achieve this? It's quite straightforward, you simply utilise the concept of a Neapolitan cake. Obviously, this isn't a reference to pizza dough, but a divine dessert composed of a wonderful mosaic of different colours and flavours - vanilla, chocolate and strawberries. Additionally, the perfect garnish would be a heart-shaped decoration, which can be fashioned in no time at all.

Ingredients:

• 5 eggs,
• 1 cup of sugar,
• About 2.6 cups of wheat flour,
• 2 teaspoons of baking powder,
• 1 cup of oil,
• 1 cup of Sprite,
• 3 teaspoons of wheat flour (divided),
• 1.5 teaspoons of cocoa,
• Pink food colouring.

Step 1. The recipe starts with separating the egg whites from the yolks. Whisk the egg whites into a stiff foam. Gradually, add fine sugar to the mixture, doing this in small intervals. Repeat the process with the yolks.

Step 2. Now, introduce the following ingredients to the mixture: wheat flour, baking powder, oil, and Sprite. Interestingly, using Sprite gives the cake a fabulously moist and fluffy texture, along with creating some new and interesting flavours.

Step 3. I break up the final dough into three separate segments. I add 1.5 teaspoons of cocoa to the first segment, 1.5 teaspoons of flour to the second, and to the third segment, 1.5 teaspoons of flour with the pink food colouring.

And with that, you've created a three-coloured dough ready to be baked.

Step 4. Line a round baking pan with paper, then start alternatively filling it with the brown, white, and pink mixes.

Step 5. I then build a second layer using the white mixture. Here, a pastry bag comes in handy. Subsequently, I create tiny blobs all across the surface using the pink mixture. Finally, I form these into hearts using a small knife.

The cake is then baked for 60 minutes in an oven preheated to 177°C.

Step 6. The completed cake is decorated with icing sugar. Homemade icing and chocolate sauce can also go well with this. Bon appétit!