Chocolate Easter Egg Cake
Quick and easy Chocolate Easter Egg Cake
This quick and super easy Easter Egg cake makes good use of any large icing nozzles you already have at home. If you need to buy nozzles, the Tala food piping set is a very good place to start, with three nozzles that will be perfect for this cake.
Top your finished cakes with sweeties, edible fresh flowers and choose Easter colours – whether fun and lurid or tastefully pastel, the effect is always striking and sure to delight!
Ingredients
For the cake:
280g soft dark brown sugar
280g baking margarine or softened butter
5 free-range eggs
2 tsp vanilla essence
230g self-raising flour
50g cocoa powder
1 tsp baking powder
For the decoration:
800g buttercream
Food colourings of your choice
Sprinkles
Easter theme sweeties
Equipment
Table knife
2 Tala Performance 20cm (8 inch) diameter sandwich tins
2 greaseproof paper circles, 20cm (8 inch) diameter
To Bake:
- Preheat the oven to 150 degrees Celsius (302 Fahrenheit).
- Line the sandwich tins with a circle of greaseproof paper.
- In a large mixing bowl, cream the brown sugar and margarine together with the silicone headed spatula, pounding away any lumps of sugar with back of the spatula. Then mix in the eggs followed by the vanilla essence.
- Weigh out the flour and add to it the cocoa powder and baking powder.
- Mix the dry ingredients into the wet until the mixture is smooth.
- Divide the mixture between the two tins and bake for 25 minutes, turn, and bake for a further 10 minutes if necessary. The cakes will be 'done' when they spring back with gently pressed in the centre – or a Tala cake tester appears to be clean when inserted and removed from the centre of the cake.
- Leave the cakes to rest for a couple of minutes in their tins before turning out onto a wire rack to cool completely. You may need to help them out of their tins by running a sharp knife around the edges.
To Decorate:
- When the cakes are cool, level with the cake leveller (just cut off the domed part of the cake), stack on top of each other and trim the sides into an egg shape.
- Fit each piping bag with a different nozzle and set aside for a moment.
- Divide the buttercream into three equal portions, colour, and fill each piping bag with a different colour.
- Pipe swirls and peaks in different colours all over the surface of one of the chocolate cakes, then place the other cake on top and repeat so the cake looks like a colourful Easter egg when viewed from above. Sprinkle with egg-shaped Easter treats and serve!
Tips:
Make your buttercream as easy to pipe as possible by softening in the microwave. BEWARE, it is very easy to overheat. Microwave on 'low' for 5 second intervals until you reach the right consistency.
Make ahead: if you have time to bake the cake the previous day, the trimming part will be easier. Wrap the cooled cakes in cling film until you get the trimming stage.
To make the trimming part easier still, pop the cakes into the freezer for an hour or so. (Caution: do not allow the cakes to freeze completely as it will make them dangerous to cut with a knife – you could slip and cut yourself. Once cake has been frozen once it cannot be refrozen.)
Emily May
I made this delicious recipe at home with the children and it was great. They enjoyed this a lot and we look forward to trying more of your recipes. Thank you Tala!