Luscious Lips Valentine’s Cake is a delightful and whimsical treat that will steal the show this Valentine’s Day! With its vanilla-buttermilk layers, pink buttercream, and playful red gummy lips, this cake promises to add a sweet splash of love to any celebration.
Luscious Lips Valentine’s Cake: A Sweet Celebration
This delectable vanilla-flavored buttermilk cake is the perfect centerpiece for your Valentine’s Day celebration! Frosted in a soft pink buttercream and decorated with festive red, gold, and pink sprinkles, this cake comes to life with playful red gummy lips perched on toothpicks. Perfectly light and flavorful, it’s sure to tempt your tastebuds!

A Cake for Every Occasion
While this cake shines brightly as a Valentine’s Day treat, it is versatile enough to suit any occasion! With a few tweaks to the decoration—different sprinkles or frosting color or entirely omitting the embellishments—you can easily transform this delightful dessert into a classic buttermilk cake to match your party or theme.

Luscious Lips Valentine’s Cake Ingredients
Cake Ingredients
Cake Flour: It has lower protein than all-purpose flour, which helps prevent too much gluten formation, resulting in a tender cake.
Baking Soda: Reacts with the acidic buttermilk to leaven the cake by producing bubbles that cause the cake to rise.
Baking Powder: Although it doesn’t react with buttermilk like baking soda, it will help leaven the cake.
Salt: Flavors the cake.
Unsalted Butter: Adds flavor and binds the ingredients together.
Sugar: Sweetens the cake, retains moisture, and helps prevent gluten formation to yield a tender cake.
Eggs: This recipe uses whole eggs and egg whites to add structure to the cake. Egg yolks contain fat, which adds rich flavor. Egg whites help leaven the cake.
Vanilla: A flavor enhancer that adds richness and depth to the cake.
Buttermilk: Reacts with the baking soda to help leaven the cake. It also tenderizes the cake, making it fluffy and soft without overwhelming it with buttermilk flavor.

Buttercream Frosting Ingredients
Unsalted Butter: Provides the structure and binding for the other ingredients. Also, it adds flavor. You can substitute salted butter, but depending on the butter’s saltiness, you may need to reduce or eliminate the salt ingredient.
Vanilla Extract: Adds flavor to the buttercream.
Salt: Mingles with the sugar to create an irresistible flavor. Also, it helps to reduce excessive sweetness.
Confectioners’ Sugar: This creates a non-grainy texture and provides all the sweetness.
Whole Milk: Thins the buttercream for easy spreading and creates a smooth, creamy texture.
Pink Food Coloring: Adds color to the buttercream. You can vary the amount to achieve the desired color.

Mixing Dry Ingredients
Sift the dry ingredients to ensure the cake will be lump-free. This also prevents overbeating later, which can develop gluten and make the cake tough.
Pan Preparation for Luscious Lips Valentine’s Cake
This cake is made in three 9-inch pans. To ensure the cake does not stick to the pans, use precut parchment paper rounds or cut your own from parchment paper and place them in the bottom of the greased pans.
Tip: Wet and attach baking strips to the pans before adding the batter. Wet baking strips help keep the outside of the cake layers from baking faster than the middle of the layers, resulting in flat cake layers. Although baking strips are optional, you will find they are worth the effort to bake up flat and even cake layers.

Decorations for Luscious Lips Valentine’s Cake
Place the cake on a platter. Frost between each layer and then all over the cake with the buttercream frosting. Then, add colorful sprinkles in Valentine’s colors around the bottom of the cake, extending them up about 1 1/2 to 2 inches. Add them on top of the cake or anywhere else you desire. Finally, insert toothpicks (or skewers) into gummy lips and place them atop the cake for a whimsical touch. Alternatively, use lollipops with lips or hearts for the crowning decorations.
Enjoy baking and make this luscious lips cake the centerpiece of your Valentine’s celebration!

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Luscious Lips Buttermilk Cake
Equipment
- parchment paper cut into rounds to fit pans
- (3) 9-inch cake pans
- mixer
Ingredients
Cake Ingredients
- 3 ⅔ cups cake flour
- ¾ teaspoon baking soda
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 ½ cups unsalted butter, room temperature (see note below)
- 2 cups sugar
- 3 large eggs, room temperature
- 2 egg whites, room temperature
- 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
- 1 ½ cups buttermilk, room temperature
Buttercream Ingredients
- 1 ½ cups unsalted butter, room temperature (3 sticks butter)
- 1 ½ teaspoons vanilla extract
- 1 pinch of salt
- 6 cups confectioners' sugar
- ⅓ cup whole milk (can substitute heavy cream, half and half, or whipping cream)
- 3 drops pink food coloring optional
- assorted sprinkles with gold, red, and pink colors optional
- 5 red gummi candy lips and toothpicks optional
Instructions
Cake Directions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cut three parchment paper rounds that will fit flat in the bottom of the cake pans. (You can use the bottom of a pan to trace a circle.) Then, grease and flour three 9-inch pans. Place a parchment paper in the bottom of each pan. Grease and flour the parchment rounds.
- Sift the flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt in a large mixing bowl. Stir to combine all ingredients. Set aside.
- Using a mixer, cream the butter and sugar together until well blended, about 2 minutes. Scrape down the sides, ensuring the butter and sugar are well combined. Add the eggs, egg whites, and vanilla and beat until blended well. Then, alternating between the flour and buttermilk and ending with flour, add a little of each, beating between additions, until all is added and blended. Be careful not to overbeat.
- Divide the batter between the 3 pans. To ensure that they cook evenly and are flat, use baking strips. See the note below for an easy alternative to baking strips.
- Bake for 25 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean (or with crumbs) in the center of the cake.
- Cool on racks.
Buttercream Directions
- Cream the butter, vanilla, and salt together until smooth. Add the powdered sugar a little at a time, alternating with the milk, beating between each addition. Scape down the sides of the mixing bowl and then beat the frosting for 3-4 minutes until smooth.
- Add the food coloring for a soft pink color. Use more for a darker pink and less for blush pink. Frost the cake. If using sprinkles, add them around the bottom of the cake and sprinkle a few on the top. Stick toothpicks (or skewers) in the bottom of the gummy lips and stick them on top of the cake.
Notes
Butter
If you only have salted butter for this cake recipe, cut the salt ingredient in half (1/2 teaspoon).Using Baking Strips (optional)
Place wet baking strips around the cake pan before baking to bake a flat cake without a middle dome. You can buy these at craft stores in the cake-baking section or make your own.Making Baking Strips
To make a baking strip, follow these steps:- Cut a strip from an old towel. This strip should be long enough to fit around your cake pan and sufficient to fold over and make a double thickness.
- Wet and wring out the strip until damp and not dripping.
- Wrap the strip around the pan, overlapping the ends.
- Pin the strip with safety pins until it fits securely around the pan.
- Repeat until each pan has a baking strip.
- Fill the pans with batter and bake until an inserted toothpick comes out clean. This method keeps the cake sides from baking faster than the middle of the cake. You may need to add baking time until the toothpick test shows the cake is done.