I recently bought myself a new cake pan in the sale, as you do, an Easter egg one which I thought would make a lovely cake for Easter Sunday when my family and I go to my OH’s parents for our traditional Easter Sunday lunch and egg hunt.
I also adore mini eggs, they are my favourite type of egg, chocolate or otherwise, and I wanted to incorporate them into this easter egg cake somehow. Another thing I really like and have wanted to have a go at recreating myself , is the pinterest favourite cake filling – the pinata cake! Mostly I have seen this effect done using smarties or skittles or even M&M’s – I thought why not use mini eggs? And that is what I have done with my Chocolate Eatser Egg Pinata Cake.
- 200g unsalted butter
- 200g caster sugar
- 160g self raising flour
- 40g cocoa powder
- 4 eggs
- 2 tbsp Beanies Cinder Toffee Flavoured Instant Coffee Granules mixed in 25ml almost boiling water
- 1½ packets of Cadburys Chocolate Mini Eggs
- 1 packet of Tesco mini , mini chocolate eggs
- 250g Renshaws Chocolate flavoured ready to roll icing
- 50g cold unsalted butter
- 100g icing sugar
- 100g milk chocolate , melted
- 1 tsp Beanies Double Chocolate Flavoured Instant Coffee Granules
- 1 packet of Dr Oetekar chocolate stars
- 1 white chocolate writing icing tube
- Cake release (or butter & flour) to grease the pan
- Grease the easter egg pan thoroughly
- pre heat the oven to 180oC / 160oC (fan)
- cream the butter and sugar together until soft and creamy
- add the eggs and a spoonful of flour and beat again for a couple of minutes
- Add the remaining flour and cocoa powder and the cinder toffee coffee and fold in until combined
- Pour into the cake tin and smooth over
- Place into the oven and cook for 40 - 50 minutes until cooked all the way through - you might want to place foil over the cake after 30 mins to prevent the edges of the cake singing
- Once cooked allow to cool and then remove from the tin and place on a wire rack
- Make the buttercream by creaming the butter until soft and smooth. Carefully add the icing sugar and beat until smooth and creamy
- Stir the double chocolate coffee into the melted chocolate and add to the icing sugar and butter, and mix well to make a chocolate buttercream
- Cover and put to one side until the cake is complelty cooled
- Once the sponges are completely cooled, carefully slice it in half to make 2 sponges
- In the top, thicker and more dome shaped sponge, using a large circular pastry cutter cut a hole - do not go all the way to the bottom though. You want to make a pocket, so use a spoon and a knife to scoop out the round and discard (or eat!)
- Place the pastry cutter on top of the other sponge half in the same place that you just cut a whole out of the other sponge. Then add the buttercream to the sponge around the cutter - the space inside the cutter must not have any buttercream inside
- In the hole of the top sponge, fill with the mini eggs and then carefully sandwich the 2 sponges together
- Cover the outside of the cake with the remaining buttercream
- Roll out the brown ready to roll icing and cover the cake with it and trim off any excess
- Write 'Happy Easter' with the icing tube
- Use the icing from the tube stick the chocolate stars on to the egg for decoration
- Serve as required
This cake was delicious and the boys loved seeing the mini eggs fall out when it was cut open. I think that using the chocolate ready to roll icing was effective and from a distance made the cake look like an actual chocolate easter egg. Obviously, using coffee granules in the sponge and buttercrean is optional and if this was for children then just cocoa powder would probably work better as not all children enjoy the taste of coffee.
However, that said I really liked the subtle taste that the Beanies Coffee Granules added to this cake. The cinder toffee flavour used in the sponge was nice – the flavour added an extra dimesion ( and fragrance), and the double chocolate coffee in the chocolate buttercream added some lovely texture with a light coffee flavour. I will be making this again for Easter Sunday.
This Chocolate Easter Egg Pinata Cake is my entry into the Beanies Easter Baking Challenge. You can see the other entries by following the hashtag #BeaniesBakeOff on Twitter
I was sent jars of the Beanies Flavoured Instanr Coffee for the purpose of devising a recipe.
You can discover more about their products on their website http://www.beaniesflavours.co.uk
