I've been hiding this post away for awhile as you can probably tell as its titled "Easter". This is mainly because the cake didn't work at all how it was meant too and its not fun writing about everything that went wrong... but here goes.
This recipe came from my friend Tracey who has perfected this cake several times and it didn't appear to be that difficult. She gave me many tips from the many times she has made this so I should have been able to do it, but playing around with chocolate is difficult. Her biggest tip was to use cooking chocolate and not to try and be 'fancy' using nice chocolate as she said it just doesn't work. The first problem is that in Australia the chocolate that is in the cooking isle is aptly called 'Cooking Chocolate' and this is very easy to find. However in the UK I find I'm in the deep in when I'm choosing chocolate. In the baking section of several supermarkets I am yet to find a 'cooking chocolate' in any baking sections. They have 'chocolate cake covering' which I don't even like the sound of and sounds far from what I need. Anyway if anyone in the UK has tips on this I will be all ears.
Anyway, so basically I was going to make a cake look like an Easter Egg which the kids could break open to reveal more eggs. I had baked a lovely chocolate cake with chocolate icing and on top of this I put an array of different eggs, including the mini eggs which seem to be a UK favourite and some Cadbury crème egg mini's. The cake itself looked delish and I knew the kids would love it. Next was the hard part, getting a chocolate shell to cover the cake which would then be the actual egg which the kids could then break open to reveal the cake. I tried doing the shell several times, but it just wouldn't come unstuck from the bowl. In the end I managed to get one out, but it wasn't smooth or even looked remotely like an egg. The next problem was the 1.5 hour drive in which by the time we ended up at the family gathering the chocolate had complete melted all over the cake despite being in a cooler bag.
The cake wasn't a complete disaster but I did feel completely defeated by it. Unfortunately I didn't get to stick around until they cut it, but apparently it still went down well and the eggs were a surprise in the middle.
I think I'll try again next year.. maybe!
Happy Baking x
Oh no! I'm sorry the cake defeated you! The one advantage of aus chocolate is all the stuff they add to stop it melting in our ridonk climate, tastes worse but so easy to work with!!
ReplyDeleteMore tips in case you feel up to it again... You need a steel pudding bowl, comes away easier in my experience. Also cooking choc is compound chocolate, so check for that on the label. I have used choc melts (the nestle buttons) and it works so maybe you can find them? Also the shell sometimes looks a bit ugly, that's where sticking on the freckles or smarties comes in!
Cake looks delish anyway and yum is always way more important than fance any day!!