So, this weekend is Easter themed and there is a second blog tomorrow. I’m going to talk about how I made my Easter Celebration cake this year, completely different to my other cakes I’ve done and certainly a step up from last year. I didn’t just want to try new decorations, I wanted to try new flavours and this cake was raspberry and lemon flavoured. I thought it would be a good Spring choice. I was actually really happy to make this cake, Easter is one of my favourite times of the year baking wise and especially at the minute I’m baking so much.
For the cake I made a large cake mix so I could make four cakes. As I had a lot of time on my hands I even weighed each cake to make sure it was the same, I wanted my cakes to be even. I added 350g of butter, sugar, self-raising flour, 6 eggs and some baking powder. I put this all in my mixer and turned it on, I then got such a fright because an egg jumped out of my bowl. As I was trying to hide my mess, my dad came up and scared me, I’ve never jumped so high. I added another egg to my mix because literally a full egg came out of the bowl. I just thought it was hilarious. I then added some vanilla flavouring and 120g crushed raspberries. I baked the cakes two at a time at 180 degrees for 25 minutes. Once I had all my cakes baked I let them cool and started making my buttercream.
How much buttercream I need is something I always struggle to judge. When I started to make the buttercream I knew I wanted to make double so when I added 500g butter more than I needed I couldn’t believe I had done that. I scooped the butter out I didn’t need and refocused. I somehow managed to rope my mam into helping me bake. I added 1kg of icing sugar and some milk along with a dash of vanilla flavouring. The buttercream was really smooth and I started to fill my cakes. I added some buttercream and filled the layers with lemon curd. I did a crumb coat and left it for 15 minutes.
I coloured some of the buttercream green and some pink. I didn’t colour a lot because you just want a dash of colour. I did another layer of white buttercream and then added some dashes of green and pink. I couldn’t find my favourite scraper and spent ages trying to find it. In the end I made use of what I had and tried to get it as smooth as possible. With the remaining buttercream I coloured it green for the grass. I had a grass nozzle and piped all over the top of the cake. Some of the strands came down the side of the cake but I loved how that looked.
Once the cake was covered in all the buttercream, I had to make the rabbit. Now I’m no expert in fondant but I spent ages trying to make its feet. I started by making a hemisphere out of the white icing. I then added a smaller ball for the tail and I used a toothpick to make some texture on the tail. I made two smaller ovals for the feet and added some pink balls for the pads. It sounds simple and in reality was quite easy I just made life hard for myself. Once I had my rabbit and was happy I added it to my cake and then added some mini eggs around. I thought the cake was missing something so piped some grass as a border for the cake. I loved how the rabbit looked and thought it was a really vibrant cake.
I love Easter because there is so many things you can bake. Especially at the minute when we’ve got to stay inside. I’m using my time to bake what I’ve always wanted to try and spend time on my baking. I loved how my Easter cake turned out. Obviously a big part of Easter is the chocolate. Considering a lot of my family don’t eat chocolate is means I don’t bake with it a lot. Easter is my exception and tomorrows blog is just what every chocoholic needs.
Lots of love,
Hannah xx
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