Hello folks! Hope you’ve all had a happy and delicious Easter Sunday with loads of special dishes on your brunch table. Though Easter meals are a rather grand feast on their own with carefully planned courses including standard stuff like hot cross buns, kids and grown ups both get way more excited over the fun of Easter egg hunting. While everyone else must have been running around to collect chocolate eggs and candies hidden around their homes and gardens, I sat back to enjoy my all-time favorite Cadbury Crème which brings back fond childhood memories. Because my Cadbury egg is [definitely] not meant for sharing, I had to bake something for the rest of the family. This yummy chocolate and almond cake, from Taste.com.au, with its little nest of chocolate curls and mini Kinder Eggs was again ‘too cute to be shared’ but then I had to get over my guilt feeling of going over the top with all that chocolate.

EASTER CHOCOLATE CAKE

Ingredients:

For the Chocolate Cake

1 cup firmly packed brown sugar

1/2 cup cocoa powder, sifted

125g unsalted butter, softened

4 eggs, room temperature

3/4 cup almond meal, toasted

1 1/4 cup all purpose flour

2 teaspoons coffee granules

1 tablespoon boiling hot water

For the Chocolate Icing & Topping

200g dark chocolate, broken into pieces

50g unsalted butter, room temperature

100g white cooking chocolate, melted

100g milk cooking chocolate, melted

Mini Easter eggs, to decorate

Method:

  • Preheat oven to 160C. Grease and line base and side of a 20cm base measurement round cake pan.
  • Combine sugar and cocoa powder in a large bowl. Melt butter in a small saucepan over a low heat.

  • Add hot melted butter to sugar mixture and stir until well combined. Stir in the eggs one at a time.
  • Stir in coffee, hot water, almond meal and flour until combined. Spoon mixture into pan and level.

  • Bake for 45 minutes until edges are firm to touch and centre is moist. Cool cake completely in pan.
  • To make shards, spread white and milk chocolate separately over base of 2 baking trays, 1 cm thick.

  • Allow to set firm. Carefully run knife at an angle down the length of chocolate to form curly shards.
  • Make the icing by melting the chocolate and the butter together in a small saucepan over low heat.

  • Cool in pan for 4-5 minutes then spread over top of cooled cake. Leave the icing to cool completely.
  • Carefully pile the chocolate curls at centre of cake to form nest and place mini Easter eggs in nest.

Happy Easter Holidays!