A Weekend of Baking...The Ultimate Chocolate Easter Cake and Cupcakes

To continue with the Easter tradition of far too much chocolate and not enough time, I made a gorgeously gooey chocolate cake for the family and some cupcakes for work.

The Ultimate Chocolate Easter Cake

The recipe I used for the cake calls for buttermilk and 200g of melted 70% chocolate all swirled into the mixture, which makes for a rather wet batter. This, combined with a slow cooking time and a fairly cool 140C oven, gives a dense and fudgy texture to the cake.

Tip: When mixing this cake, it's a bit like a muffin. Mix until everything is only just combined and smooth and get it in the oven as fast as possible, otherwise the bicarbonate of soda will start to react and  all the raising action will have finished before the cake gets into the oven.

For the chocolate ganache filling and covering, I used a simple recipe again with 200g of 70% chocolate, cream and a little golden caster sugar to take the edge off the bitterness. I made mine the night before and covered the bowl with clingfilm ready to use in the morning. To decorate the cake I cut it in half (This is where you need a good rise as a fudgy cake such as this is difficult to cut if it is too short) and filled it with some of the ganache, then using a star nozzle I piped little rosettes over the top to make it look like a nest. Finished with a couple of little fuzzy chicks (peep peep!) I think this makes the perfect easter cake to be enjoyed with a cup of tea. (Or if you're like me and it's Easter, for your lunch!)

Tip: If you return to your ganache and it is too hard to pipe with, put the bowl over a saucepan of just boiled water and stir gently until you have the required texture. Don't heat it up too much if you want to pipe with it as you'll only have to wait for it to cool down again.

Ultimate Chocolate Cupcakes

Everyone needs a little pick-me up returning to work after a couple of bank holidays off, and what better way to cheer people up than with cake! I made some lovely chocolatey cupcakes today which came out very well. Decorated with mini eggs (or maxi-eggs as shown by M&S!) and fluffy easter, they will be the perfect way to start a short week at work.

Tip: As with many english cupcake recipes, the numbers that the recipe states are always a little over enthusiastic, especially if you want a larger mouthful. Traditionally, cupcakes are American and as a result, are bigger than the English version of a cupcake. If I'm using an english recipe, I always make a quantity and a half, and use what we would probably call muffin cases to bake them in. These always result in bigger, tastier and all-round better cakes in my opinion.