Happy Easter Baking

As regulars to my blog will know, I am rather fond of sprinkles and Silverspoon recently sent me a set of gorgeous sprinkles, pink icing and other cake decorations, just in time for Easter! Silverspoon have a fantastic range of decorations to make your cakes and desserts look extra special!

You can also find on their website lots of lovely recipes, these gorgeous looking Coconut clusters have caught my eye and am rather intrigued by this lush looking Sticky chocolate yoghurt cake

As its Easter, I just had to make these little fairy cakes to take into work using the lovely Silverspoon decorations and a little glace icing:

I used the Fairy cakes recipe from Silverspoon’s website and also added a bag of their chocolate chips, which made lovely light little buns that rapidly vanished!

Continuing with the Easter baking theme, I also made this gorgeous Mocha cake, my entry for the great Easter Cake Bake held every year over at the lovely Julia's blog A Slice of Cherry Pie

Mocha cake

Taken from Baking, published by Star fire books and aka my baking bible! The original recipe is for Coffee and Pecan cake but had to adapt slightly as I made it for an Easter family lunch and two of the guests have nut allergies.

Ingredients:
175g self-raising flour, sifted
125g butter or margarine
175g golden caster sugar
1 tbsp coffee, instant or granules
2 large eggs
2 tbsp cocoa powder

Icing:

1tsp coffee, instant or granules
1 tsp cocoa powder
75g unsalted butter, softened
175g icing sugar

Oven 190o/ fan 170o, gas 5 – pre-heat 10 minutes

You will need 2x 7” sandwich tins, lined (I always use baking parchment liners!)

Dissolve the coffee in 2 tbsp hot water and allow to cool.

Beat the butter and sugar together (I *heart* my Kenwood Chef!) until light and creamy, mix the eggs with the cooled coffee mixture and beat into the butter sugar mix, adding a little flour every few beats, until all mixed in, pour into the tins and bake for 20-25 minutes or until a skewer comes away clean, allow to cool thoroughly before icing.

To ice, beat the butter and sugar. Dissolve the coffee and cocoa with a little boiling water, add to the mix and beat until smooth, use half for the filling and remaining half for the topping. Store in an airtight container.

Decoration as desired!