Easter Eggstravaganza Cake

This may just be the best cake I’ve ever made…  (if I say so myself)

This cake is definitely not your typical (and slightly boring..) Easter simnel cake! This is such a show-stopping, fun cake that is actually surprisingly straight forward to make 🙂

The inspiration for this exciting cake came from walking through town a few days ago.. The Lakeland Easter display really caught my eye, as it always does! I immediately started thinking about what cake I was going to bake for my family and then I decided, why not take the elements seen in their display and combine the two?

I have never attempted an ‘anti-gravity’ cake before, so I thought this would be the perfect time to try!

The cake is a chocolate sponge with a vanilla buttercream. It is topped with a drizzle of chocolate ganache and finished with as many mini eggs as possible! ❤

The chocolate sponge recipe is the BEST cake recipe I have ever come across! It comes from the Add a pinch website, and is my go-to recipe for a chocolate cake.. Not only is it incredibly easy to make (as it requires only one mixing bowl) but it produces the most mouthwatering results!

The chocolate sponge is made by using oil and boiling water. I believe this to be the reason as to why its so moist and spongy! The vanilla buttercream is light and fluffy and suits the cake well. However, if you really love your chocolate then go ahead and cover the cake in a chocolate butter cream!

The recipe for the sponge can be found on the Add a pinch website or here below: 🙂

Ingredients:

• 2cups plain flour
• 2 cups of sugar
• 3/4 cup of cocoa (I use Bourneville)
• 2 tsp.baking powder
• 1/2tsp. baking soda
• 1 tsp. salt
• 1 cup milk (I use semi-skimmed)
• 1/2 vegetable oil
• 2 free range large eggs
• 2 tsp. vanilla extract
• 1 cup of boiling water
• 1 tsp instant coffee
• Large plastic straws and a skewer 
• 4 big packets of mini eggs
• A small chocolate Easter egg

Method:

Preheat the oven to 180 °C. Grease 3 20cm round cake tin. In a large mixing bowl, sift together the flour, sugar, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Whisk until you have a uniform looking dry mix. Add all of the wet ingredients except the boiling water – the eggs, milk, vegetable oil and vanilla. Whisk until a thick batter is formed. Next add the tsp. of instant coffee to the cup of boiling water. Add this slowly to the mix and whisk, you should now have thin batter 🙂

Fill the cake tins equally and place in the oven. Bake for 20-25 mins, or until a cocktail stick comes out clean. Set the cakes aside to cool and remove from the pans.

Whilst the cakes are cooling, make the butter cream!

For this, add 3 and 1/2 to 4 cups of icing sugar to 1 1/2 cups of softened butter. The amount of icing sugar you add is best judged when you’re making the butter cream 🙂 It should be a smooth, silky consistency that holds shape. Beat in 1tsp of vanilla extract, and I also like to add a dash of milk to the buttercream to make it nice and glossy!

Next, place one of the cakes onto a round board, or a plate which you will be serving it on. Place a large spoonful of the buttercream in the centre of the sponge, and spread careful towards the edges. Place the next sponge on top and repeat! Place the final cake on top of the iced sponge below. Make a hole in the cake, through to the bottom of the board wherever you wish to make the mini egg ‘river’. I used two cardboard straws and fed one inside another. Bend the top of the straw so the chocolate egg can rest on it.

Put the remaining buttercream in the centre of the cake, and carefully ice the sides of the cake. To do this use a large palette knife (or just a knife will do), are slowly tease the buttercream to the edges, and down the sides of the cake. This is quite tricky to do if you’ve never done it before, so try and stay patient! It doesn’t need to be perfect 🙂 This youtube video explains how to ice a cake properly : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uI9ITH0xgjo (don’t worry about the turn table).

To make the ganache, place 100g of chocolate (I use dairy milk) and 75ml of double cream in a bowl. Place in the microwave on a 600W setting approx. Blast the ganache in the microwave for 20 seconds at a time, mixing in between until a glossy ganache is formed.  Leave the ganache to thicken for 2 mins. Place the ganache in the centre of the cake, and gently tease to the edges of the cake. You shouldn’t need to push it to the edges too much, if you leave it for 5-10mins it should drip down the sides of the cake 🙂

Cover the top of the cake with mini eggs 🙂 Melt 50g of chocolate. With a teaspoon, cover the straws in the chocolate. Insert a thin skewer into the straw and bend it into shape. From the bottom up, build mini eggs up the side of the straw, using chocolate on the bottoms of the eggs so that they stick to the egg below – they should stick to the sides of the straw because the chocolate acts as a kind of glue (hopefully)!

I gently cut the top of my cadburys chocolate egg into a zig-zag patter.To stop it from cracking, use small grating knife movements.

Finally, place the chocolate egg on the bent skewer and TA DA! You’re cake is complete! And hopefully should stay in place… My chocolate egg only managed to balance for around 20mins! 😦

ENJOY!! xxxx ❤