I love Easter. Ok, to be honest, I love most big holidays: Easter, Halloween, Christmas, Valentine’s Day are all included. (St. Patrick’s Day is not. It gets a big, fat thumbs down.) And, for all of those, I’ve collected countless nicknacks worthy of dragging out year after year to decorate my home. Though, usually, I don’t, because I get involved in some other project and I mean to and then all of a sudden, the holiday is passed and I did lots of themed baking but no actual decorating. Whoops. I did, however manage to decorate the heck out of my house this past Halloween. Which was great, until March came around and the pumpkins out front were still there.
I didn’t get around to decorating for Easter this year but I spent the weekend making Easter-themed goodies. These include a homemade Cadbury creme eggs. A lot of homemade Cadbury creme eggs.
For the spring season, I put out the call that I was making such eggs in high-end dark or milk chocolate and was flooded with orders! As result, the past few weekends have been devoted to crafting these delicate goodies. And, as those who have assisted me found out, the process is pretty involved. There’s the tempering of the chocolate, the pouring it into molds, the cooling of the molds, the making of the fondant, the filling of the eggs with the two colors of fondant, the sealing of the eggs, and finally the wrapping of the eggs in their foil and packaging them for transport…in egg boxes of course! 🙂
The first batch I made were delicious but huge and the chocolate shells were too thick. Now, I know, you’re probably thinking – but how on earth could a candy have too much chocolate? Just trust me. There can. So, for the second batch, I ordered smaller molds and thinned out the shells so that the result was a chocolate shell that broke without too much effort. After all, you don’t want to break your teeth on them!
Then, this past weekend, I embarked on a mission to make my third homemade cake since diving deep into baking. The first cake was the Heaven and Hell cake from Saveur that I made for my birthday. The combination of Devil’s Food Cake and Angel’s Food Cake with peanut butter mousse resulted in a delicious (and rich) cake, but at that point I still had a lot to learn about icing. My second cake was a fondant-covered cake, so no icing involved on that one. Between those two cakes and this one, though I’m not a fan of his show (I’m allergic to reality drama), I credit the Cake Boss for teaching me how to dirty ice a cake. Sounds fun, right?
When you dirty ice a cake, you’re not focused on pretty. The purpose of this first layer of icing is to seal in all those pesky crumbs so that when you go to to really ice it, the cake looks perfect. To dirty ice, cover the sides and top of the cake with a thin layer of frosting. When I do it, I put a huge glob of icing on top of the cake and then start smoothing it from there with an offset spatula. When you’re done, there might be crumbs trapped in the frosting but that’s ok. Now just put it in the fridge for about an hour for so it can set.
The cake that I made for my friend’s Easter brunch was this Chocolate Ganache cake with Truffle Eggs by Martha Stewart. Except I modified it. I love good chocolate, but I’m not a fan of chocolate cake, so I swapped out the chocolate base of the cake with a double vanilla cake, courtesy of Vanilla and Garlic. Otherwise, I followed the recipe to a T, topping the crumb with chocolate icing and topping it all with a chocolate ganache that gave it a tempting sheen. On top, I chopped up and shaved a dark chocolate Lindt bar to make the nest.
The truffles were the big hit, though. For the Truffle Eggs, I composed truffles out of peanut butter and high-quality milk chocolate, and then, when there were hard, dipped these in white chocolate that I had dyed robin’s egg blue. After the chocolate set, I painted each egg with disco dust to make them sparkle.
Here is the final result!
And now, for the close up.
P.S. Yes, there was a cake wreck. Literally. It was supposed to be 3″ taller than it was. Apparently, one must wait longer before removing cake from the pan. Any thoughts on what to do with broken cake?