I know the Easter break is almost over but I thought I'd share this recipe with you for a chocolate layer cake, decorated with easter eggs. This isn't the first time a chocolate easter egg layer cake has appeared on the blog. This one is a completely different recipe though and one I wrote for the Everten Love to Cook blog.
The chocolate cake is adapted from a Julia Turshen recipe from her book, Small Victories. For the chocolate cream icing, I used my regular cream cheese icing recipe and kept adding stuff until it tasted good and good it was.
Rather than slicing through cakes, I baked 4 individual 16 cm cakes. Of course you could bake this in two 16 cm tins and slice the cakes horizontally but cutting cakes evenly is not my forte.
If you'd like to make this 4 layer chocolate cake with or without the chocolate eggs, here's the recipe for you. For all my recipes I use a 250 ml cup and a 20 ml tablespoon, 60 gm eggs and unsalted butter unless specified. My oven is a conventional gas oven, not fan forced, so you may have to lower your oven temperature by 20°C.
Chocolate Easter Egg Layer Cake
1 cup (150 g) plain flour
1 cup (220 g) caster sugar
¾ cup (75 g) Dutch-processed cocoa powder, sifted
1 tsp bicarb soda
1 tsp baking powder
½ tsp salt
110 g unsalted butter, melted and cooled
2 eggs, lightly beaten
150 mls strong black coffee, at room temperature
150 mls buttermilk
1 tsp vanilla extract
Chocolate Cream Cheese Icing
30mls cream
60 g dark chocolate, finely chopped
3 tbs cocoa, sifted
60g butter, softened
125g cream cheese, softened
1 tsp vanilla
2 cups icing sugar, sifted
Easter eggs to decorate
Cake
Preheat oven to 180°C/350°F. Grease and line the base of four 16 cm cake pans (I used the Master Pro non stick layer pan from Everten) with baking paper. I lightly dusted each pan with a tsp of cocoa powder.
In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, cocoa, bicarb soda, baking powder, and salt. Add the melted butter, eggs, coffee, buttermilk and vanilla and whisk until the batter is smooth. Divide the batter evenly among the prepared cake pans (I used scales, but you can also use a measuring cup to be accurate).
Bake until the cakes are firm to the touch about 25 minutes and a toothpick inserted in the centre comes out clean. Transfer the cakes, still in their pans, to a wire rack and let cool completely. Once cool, loosen the edges of the cakes from the pans with a knife and invert them onto your work surface. Peel and discard the baking paper then turn right side up.
Icing
To make the dark chocolate cream cheese icing, bring the cream to the boil then remove from the heat. Add the chocolate and leave to melt. When the chocolate has melted add the cocoa and to stir to make a paste. Set aside to cool.
While the chocolate is cooling beat the butter, cream cheese and vanilla in a bowl until very pale and creamy. Gradually add the icing sugar, beating well after each addition. Add the chocolate paste to the cream cheese icing and stir well until you have a rich dark smooth icing. Refrigerate the bowl of icing to firm before decorating the cakes.
To assemble
Use a large serrated knife to level the top of each cake. Reserve the best layer for the top of the cake. Place one cake layer onto a serving plate. Spread with ¼ of the dark chocolate cream cheese icing. If your icing is very soft, refrigerate the cake to firm the icing before topping with the next cake layer. Continue to repeat this process, decorating the top of the cake with chocolate eggs then refrigerate until serving time. This is a rich cake so cut into small slices to serve.
I hope you all enjoyed your Easter break. See you all again next week with some more baking from my kitchen. I'm heading to Europe in just 2 weeks and I'm starting to get excited even though I'm still waiting on both my new passport and credit card to arrive.
See you all again soon.
Bye for now,
Jillian
