April 3, 2019
Mini Egg Chocolate Cake!
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A three-layer Mini Egg chocolate cake with pastel vanilla buttercream frosting and Mini Eggs! Perfect Easter showstopper!
Mini Egg chocolate cake
Oh, heyyyyy the most winning Easter cake ever – my Mini Egg chocolate cake! That is a bit of a lie, I love all of my Easter showstopper cakes equally, and this one even though it is new is already one of my favourites. It just looks so pretty and tastes wonderful.
I thought I would post another Easter beauty this year, as I had a craving to do a layer cake with different pastel-like colours, and matching the Mini Egg colours seemed ideal! The buttercream colours contrast so nicely with the chocolate sponge, and it ends up looking quite spectacular!
Easter recipes
Last year I posted my Easter piñata cake, and I adore it still. Who doesn’t love a cake full of Chocolate. Last year I also posted my Easter chocolate fudge cake, and I realise I have an issue with posting probably too many chocolate themed Easter cakes, but I just want to post more.
In 2016, I posted my Mini Egg cake, which has stayed as one of my all-time favourites, because it has an Easter egg poking out of the top, and I don’t think you can really ever beat that to be fair. HOWEVER. I am all for this new recipe, because just look at it. It’s simple, its delicious, and it’s going to please EVERYONE.
Prefer vanilla?
If however, you don’t like chocolate, then yeah you won’t be a massive fan of it. But, there are notes in the recipe on how to make it a vanilla cake instead of chocolate if you preferred! I realise that Easter can be quite chocolate heavy for some, so you might want to change it to vanilla cake instead.
Food colouring
I use Rainbow Dust Progel Colours for this cake, as they are such good food colours. You really only need to use a tiny amount, and you get the perfect shade. I really ~desperately~ hate supermarket own liquid food colourings, as they just don’t have the pigmentation you need. Also, they can often make buttercreams split as you need to add so much.
Chocolate
Just like all my other Easter bakes, you can easily swap out the mini eggs for other Easter chocolate treats. I just use Mini Eggs as they seem to be the most popular on my blog, and I always buy so many. As soon as they’re in supermarkets, I spam purchase endless amounts, that I always think will I ever get through?! But I do…
Bake
You can bake this into one sponge and split them if you prefer, I just prefer to keep it as three separate sponges to make my life easier. Also, I have a large capacity oven, so they all fit on the same shelf at the same time. If you wanted to bake one instead, you’d have to lower the baking temperature to 140C, and bake for longer!
Worth the extra work!
I do realise that this recipe basically means a lot more washing up that normal, as you will have three cake tins, multiple bowls, spoons and spatulas, but its all worth it. I tend to just chuck everything into my dishwasher and hope it gets everything off!
This recipe is inspired by my Mini Egg cupcakes that I posted the other day, and yeah you can see some crushed M&M eggs in there, but I’d ran out of Mini Eggs as I kept eating them… so my bad. Shows how easily you can switch it all around!
Honestly, I adore this recipe so much, so I hope you all love this recipe too! Enjoy! x
Mini Egg Chocolate Cake!
Ingredients
For the Cake
- 400 g unsalted butter
- 400 g light brown sugar
- 340 g self raising flour
- 60 g cocoa powder
- 8 medium eggs
- 1 tsp baking powder
For the Buttercream
- 350 g unsalted butter (not stork)
- 700 g icing sugar
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- Purple and pink food colourings
Extras
- Mini Eggs
- Sprinkles
Instructions
For the Cake
- Preheat your oven to 180C/160C Fan, and line three 8"/20cm cake tins with parchment paper.
- Beat your butter and sugar together for a couple of minutes until light and fluffy!
- Add in your flour, cocoa powder, baking powder and eggs and beat again until a delicious cake mixture is formed.
- Split evenly between your cake tins, and bake in the oven for about 25-30 minutes. Can take less or more time, depending on your oven.
- Check the cakes are cooled with a skewer! Leave to cool in the tins for 10 minutes, and then transfer to a wire rack to cool fully.
For the Buttercream
- Make sure your butter is at room temperature, and beat on its own for about 5 minutes to really loosen it.
- Add in the icing sugar roughly 1/3 at a time, and beat fully.
- Add in your vanilla and beat until smooth - I will beat it for about 3-4 minutes to really fluff it up.
- Split the mixture evenly between three bowls - make one purple, one pink and leave the last as it is for yellow/white.
For the Decoration
- Get your first sponge, and spread/pipe over your first colour. Sprinkle on some crushed mini eggs if you like!
- Get your second sponge and repeat until you have your top sponge!
- Add on your last colour, and decorate how you like - use any leftover buttercream, or whatever you fancy and add on as many Mini Eggs as you prefer with some cute sprinkles!
Notes
- I use this purple food colouring and this pink food colouring!
- I recommend using these large piping bags as they're perfect for the job!
- And if you want to pipe the blobs of buttercream on, you can use this amazing round piping nozzle!
- Supermarket wise, the Dr Oetker extra strong gels can work for this, you might just need quite a bit of it!
- This cake will last for 3-4 days at room temperature!
- I used probably 300-400g of mini eggs in this, but you can use more or less as you please!
- If you want it to be not chocolate flavoured, take out the cocoa powder and replace with more self raising flour.
Enjoy!
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J x
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Hi, I’m planning to make this cake with chocolate buttercream instead of the regular and coloured buttercream. How much cocoa powder would I need? Thank you!
Hello 😊 I made this delicious cake for Easter! I weighed my medium eggs still in their shells and found that only 7 eggs weighed 411g so I used only 7 and matched the other ingredients to 411g. But I did find the cake was quite dry. It also domed and cracked. It was my first time baking in new gas oven, do you think it was just that my oven temp was too high? Or do you think the missing egg played a part too? At 25 mins the cakes weren’t domed really but the skewer came out wet, then after another 5 mins they were cooked but cracked and domed.
Hey! Yes, this does sound likely that it’s slightly over baked or the oven temp was too high – especially because of the domed and crack top. It’s work baking at a lower temperature for longer to prevent this! The eggs won’t be a problem if it all weighed the same x
Will this cake dry out sitting out without icing covering all the cake sides?
It depends how long you intend to leave it out? The cake lasts for 3+ days at room temp x
Hi, I’m looking to make this cake for my works Easter Bake Off competition next week 🙂 I know the mixture should be split equally between the 3 cake tins but can you tell me how many grams should be in each?
Thanks 🙂
Hiya! Just weigh the final mix and divide it by 3. Hope this helps! x
Hi!!! How would I convert this recipe for a 2 tier square cake please in 18x18cm tins please xxx
Hi could I use the same quantities but use 2 8×4 tins and split the cakes so I have 4 layers but same cake quantity overall?
Many thanks
Hiya! Yes this should be fine! Just keep an eye on the baking time! Hope this helps! x
Hi Jane!
I was Planning on making this tommorow but had no eggs so my mum went to get some and came back with large eggs. would i still use 8 eggs or should i decrease the amount of eggs?
Can i half this recipe or if i wanted it to be two tiers how much of the ingredients would need to be taken off xx
You can do a 250g/5 egg mixture instead and bake two sponges for about the same time! x
I made this cake recipe earlier today- as a halloween cake so I definitely altered it. I made 2 chocolate layers and one vanilla, coated the cake in icing and then did a dark chocolate drip, orange piping swirls and made some little ghosts out of white chocolate! I know I completely changed the decoration, but I wanted to write something on here to say I absolutely love your recipes, they are some of the only recipes I use, I enjoy making because they aren’t complicated and I understand them! I love the notes at the end about altering the flavours and the different ingredients and find it so helpful, so thankyou so much for this blog!! Xxx
Hey Jane. Happy Birthday!
How could I convert this sponge into a 3 layer, 10 inch cake?
Thankyou x
Hey! I usually say use this website – as this cake is four layers rather than three it may not be a straight increase but it should help! http://www.cakebaker1.co.uk/apps-for-bakers/baking-tin-size-conversion-calculator/
Hiya Jane, I love this recipe have used so many times, what would the recipe be for a 6” round 3inch deep 2x tins and cut the sponges into two please thank you xxx
Hey! So typically I say a 6″ is 2/3 of an 8″ recipe – and they should still cut into two! x
Hi. How deep are your cake tins please?
Thank you 😊
All my cake tins are 2.5″ or deeper for cheesecakes/sponges x
Hi Jane!
Would you say this chocolate sponge recipe be able to withstand being covered in extra buttercream and fondant too?
Many thanks
Jade
Yes that should be fine!! X
I’d like to make this chocolate cake but with a chocolate ganache on top and chocolate buttercream in between the layers. Do you think that would be too much? Should I chose either ganache or buttercream?
Is ganache just 1:1 ratio of dark choc to double cream?
Thanks for your help, I love your recipes!!
Hey! No it wouldn’t be too much – have a look at my Biscoff Drip Cake for inspiration (but yes dark chocolate is 1:1) x
Brilliant recipe!
Hi Jane
I recently made your Eton mess cake for a birthday and it was such a success, it is a 6 egg recipe for 3 tier cake and was the perfect size for the number of people
Could I make this cake as a 6 egg recipe, still keeping the 3 tiers or do you advise sticking with 8 eggs for a specific reason e.g does the chocolate cake rise a bit less?
Hope that makes sense and sorry for all the questions, I’m new at baking and your recipes are the only ones I am having success with and feel confident using xxx
Hey! So as the Eton mess one has strawberries in, the weight isn’t as little in comparison (if that makes sense) but also chocolate cakes like this do tend to rise a little less! You could make it thinner, but personally I find the sponges too thin with a 6 egg mix in three tins! Maybe a 7 egg mix would be better? xx
Hi Jane,
Can I ask what coco powder you use please? I use bornville and the sponge doesn’t come out very dark in colour like this one
Thank you!
I use cacao Barry which is 100% cocoa content so quite dark! x
Hi Jane, I’m going to make this as a vanilla version per your notes. When replacing the cocoa powder with flour do I replace for exactly the same weight, so 400g flour instead or 340g? Thanks 😊
Yes! So you want the total flour, to be the weight of the flour + cocoa powder! X
Hi Jane, I’m making this cake for my daughter for her birthday next week, I love your recipes, however she’s requesting a cake that looks like this with mini eggs but taste of chocolate orange between the layers. Is there a way I could do this? Thanks X
The best bet would be to follow this recipe as it is, but add in 1-2tsp orange extract in the sponge, or the zest of an orange!
Hi Jane, this looks lovely!
I’ve tried a few of your recipes before and loved them, and hoping to do a bit of baking with some leftover Easter goodies, possibly including this one.
I’m having problems sourcing light brown sugar in a supermarket at the moment for a few of the recipes, due to having home deliveries only(amongst every other ingredient that you have to hope you can get hold of these days!) ; is there anything that can be substituted, as I know you get that lovely caramel flavour/smell from the brown sugar but not sure if you have any recommendations? Thank you!
You can use either caster sugar, or golden caster sugar, or dark brown soft sugar!
Hellooo I’m going to make this for Easter but could I make it into a two layer cake? I don’t get all the 1/3s or 2/3s off the recipe though😂😂 I hate maths! Xx
Yes you can use 250g butter, sugar, 200g flour, 50g cocoa, 5 eggs and split between two tins!
I can’t wait to do this cake but would love it if you could do a youtube video of it!
Hiya – I have a video of my mini egg drip cake which is similar so I’d watch that one! Unfortunately I won’t be able to film this one, this year.
Great crowd pleaser – I didn’t use mini eggs between the layers but that’s just personal preference (and I kept eating the mini eggs). Topped the cake with mini eggs and a happy Easter cake topper – using several bowls to colour the icing is so worth the effort.
Hi,
I only have 9”/23cm tins, how much should I increase the quantities by?
I believe by 1/3 more!
Hi Jane this looks stunning and can’t wait to make it for my boyfriend for Easter! I made your Easter recipe last year too and it was such a hit with everyone!! In fact I only use your recipes now. Can I use plain flour for this? Do you have a general rule of thumb regarding how many tsp of baking powder for a 400g sponge cake if using plain flour or would it vary from recipe to recipe?
Hiya! Thank you so much! It varies from recipe to recipe – cocoa powder makes a cake dense more naturally, so it’ll be different to a vanilla cake. I would maybe use 2tsps total in this cake – but in general I MUCH prefer self raising flour for cakes. x
Nice Specially Kids gonna love it. we will definitely try this at our Bakery, Thank you for Sharing
What nozzle do you use for piping the buttercream on this cake please?
Theres a link in the recipe x