Made by Jayne

I’ve been making this cake for years, for a long time it was my “go to” chocolate cake recipe. It was originally  a recipe cut out of a magazine, long before I ever knew about computers, never mind blogs! It was an Easter recipe and the cake was meant to be more like a nest but I have made a few changes over the years. I hadn’t made it for a long time but when I saw Julia’s (from A Slice of Cherry Pie)  Easter Cake Bake I knew this was the cake I would enter.

Chocolate Easter Cake

For the cake

• 175g unsalted butter, softened
• 225g light soft brown sugar
•  1 tbsp golden syrup
• 3 eggs
• 70g cocoa powder, sifted
• 1 tsp espresso coffee powder
• 150ml warm water
• 150ml natural yoghurt
• 225g plain flour
• 1 tbsp baking powder

For the filling and icing

• 175g plain chocolate, broken into pieces
• 75g unsalted butter, cut into cubes
• 70ml double cream

For the decoration

• 200g milk chocolate, chilled
• 100g plain chocolate, chilled
• 50g white chocolate,chilled
• mini eggs

1. Preheat oven to 150C ( 300F, Gas 2)
2. Grease and line a 23cm, 9 in round cake tin.
3. Cream butter and sugar
4. Add golden syrup,mix.
5. Add eggs to mixture one at a time, beating well between each addition
6. Blend the cocoa powder and water to a paste, stir in the yoghurt and fold into rest of mixture.
7. Sift flour and baking powder together and gently fold into mix about a third at a time.
8. Spoon mix into prepared cake tin, level the top, make a little hollow in the middle.
9. Bake for 1 1/4 hours or unti la skewer inserted into middle comes out clean.
10. Leave to cool in tin for 20 mins then turn onto a cooling rack to cool.

For the filling and icing

1. Put the broken chocolate into a bowl and melt over a pan of lightly simmering water.
2. Remove from heat, add the butter stirring until melting.
3. Add the cream, stirring until incorporated and chill until its firm enough to spread.
4. Cut the cake into 2 layers, spread bottom layer with a 3rd of the chilled chocolate cream and sandwich layers together.
5. Spread rest of chocolate cream over top and sides of cake.
6. Using a potato peeler run along the sides of the milk, plain and white chocolate bars to make curls, arrange on top and sides of cake.
7. Decorate with mini eggs.