with Chocolate Cream Cheese Frosting and Cherries

If you’re like me, you dread the annual deluge of pastel pink EVERYTHING upon our stores each February. This year I wanted to make something that was still fitting for the holiday without being overly frilly or pink.

And soooo…I decided to make crepes, which are literally, physically frilly. But frilly and RED. Really breaking new ground over here. Red velvet is frequently used for Valentine’s Day though and even outside of the holiday, we could all use more breakfast-in-bed in our lives.

Crepes cakes are a lot of work, I won’t lie. But they’re a lot of very easy work, if that makes sense. They just take time. If anything you could argue this makes them the perfect romantic food gift.

To make this cake you will need 3 batches of my red velvet crepes recipe and 1 of the frosting. Why didn’t I just make the recipe triple for you, you might ask? Two reasons. One is that 1 batch is  what you’d make if you just wanted crepes for breakfast or dessert without making them into a cake, so now you have that ready to go. The second reason is that I make this batter in a food processor and 1 batch is all that will fit in mine without pouring out the bottom and making a huge, worrying scene of red liquid dripped all over my kitchen. So assuming you have a similar food processor, I’m just lookin’ out for ya.

This recipe does make 10-12 crepes if you’re using a small pan. I use a little 7 inch pan for these. I used 30 crepes for this cake and snacked on the extra ones while I stacked. Of course you don’t need to chill and cook these 3 times if you do go the cake route. Just make triple the batter and pour it all into the same huge bowl to chill.

 

To assemble the cake, put parchment down first, then lay your first crepe on top. I used a cake turner for mine but you don’t really need one unless you want to frost the sides. I didn’t since the sides look cool I think. Spread a thin layer of the frosting over the cake with an offset spatula. I used a heaping spoonful. Then lay the next crepe on top. Repeat this until you’re out of frosting or crepes or patience. For me it was all 3 at once so it worked out well. If you do want to frost or ganache the sides of this cake to make it look more like, well, a cake, I recommend putting a small bowl on top as a guide and trimming the edges of the crepes off with scissors to make the sides flat and even before trying to frost them. Personally, I like the look of the rough edges with the dark red color of these and it’s of course less work to leave it to showcase itself.

Once the cake is assembled it will be pretty heavy. I wouldn’t advise letting it sit on anything that isn’t solid like a table, for example a cake box. The crepes are pretty delicate so the bottom one will break and get frosting everywhere. To decorate mine and add the cherry on top, I…added cherries on top. I used a half jar of Luxardo cherries, which are expensive but very much worth it. They work perfectly for this since they come in a delicious syrup that looks pretty and tastes better. I figure Valentine’s Day and a cake like this is the time to go hard and splurge on the cherries. Pro tip: I used some of the leftover syrup from my jar to make the cherry Negronis in the photo, which go great with this.

(You can find Luxardo cherries online, like at Amazon or in your local store’s liquor section since they are intended for cocktail garnishes.)