Delectables with Dan: Stuff My Basket (An Easter Special) Easter Egg Mini Cakes!
Cake is what makes Easter, Easter, right?
I mean, it could be the eggs, the supposed son of God being strung up and nailed to some wood, or the rabbits shitting out chocolate, but here on Delectables with Dan, we think it's cake. Actually, it's just me and Pork Chop here but since it's a special, Pastel Pork Chop and his mate Pastel Phil will make an appearance to properly welcome in spring. (Or if your Christian, the death of a saviour. Sorry if that's a bit anti-Christian or offensive, but enough people come to my house trying to shove Jesus down my throat, so it's just a little bit of tit for tat.)
We're going to be making up some adorable little Easter Eggs that will really get you in the mood...for Easter & Spring! One standard boxed cake mix will make 6 mini cakes. I bought the Wilton pan off Amazon, but you can easily use a silicon baking mould. Make sure that it IS bakeable before putting the batter in and popping it into the oven.
We're going to be making up some adorable little Easter Eggs that will really get you in the mood...for Easter & Spring! One standard boxed cake mix will make 6 mini cakes. I bought the Wilton pan off Amazon, but you can easily use a silicon baking mould. Make sure that it IS bakeable before putting the batter in and popping it into the oven.
Prepare your cake as specified on the box.
Make sure that your baking tins are greased, You don't want them getting stuck in the pans. While they bake up, prepare your icing. Just a standard buttercream. We're going to divide the icing into bright and poppy Easter/Spring colours. You know, now that I think about it, you can do this with a brownie mix as well! Prepare the brownies so that you get the cake like brownies, (that means add one extra egg than what the box mix calls for.) and pour the batter into the egg-shaped pans or baking moulds. Why didn't I think of this when I was doing them? That's so cool. I think I might want to do these with lemon squares, but just not ice them, you know? Something that's cute and not chocolate, because really, I'm not that big a chocolate fan.
Right, put them in to bake for about 20-22 minutes, like you would for cupcakes or small cake pans. You're going to be re-using the pans after you pop out the first round of cakes. Let the cakes sit in the pans for about 10 minutes before popping them out of the moulds. Re-grease the baking tins, you don't want these little buggers getting stuck and pop them back into bake. Put the others to cool on a cooling rack. Once they've cooled for about 15 minutes, put them into the fridge to chill. I find that when cakes are cold they're so much easier to work with.
I got distracted thinking about lemon cakes shaped like little eggs. Where was I? Oh yes, icing! We're going to go for the traditional creamy white, labia pink, exorcist vomit green, baby boy blue, young princess violet. I was going to do an orange, but I ran out of icing bags. To get the brilliant, inviting pink colour, use a spring pink or a light pink coloured food colouring. Sometimes a good neon pink food colouring will do the trick. To get the bright green colour, it works best to use a food colouring that's bright green or neon green. To get the soft, bright blue colour you can use a light blue food colouring or simply use a standard blue, but add far less than you would if you wanted the standard blue colour it's supposed to be. I'd say 1/4 of what you'd usually put in to get a nice blue coloured icing. And young princess violet, a neon purple or a lilac food colouring will do just the trick. Or if you only have purple, simply do what you'd do if you only had the blue.If you can't get these at a local shop, just buy the colours on amazon.com. I do that. I find the Wilton is the best and most reliable. Sometimes it can get a bit expensive, but they'll most likely have the colour you're looking for. Make sure to mix all of your food colourings in thoroughly You don't want colour streets or "puddles" of the colouring in the icing when it comes out. For the tips you want to use, a small, medium and large standard round tip and a small star tip will do just fine. As I started to ice, it got rather hot in the kitchen with other things going, so the icing got a tad soft, you don't want that to happen, so be wary of that when you're icing your mini cakes!
If you don't know how to make a standard buttercream icing by now, you probably never will. I use it 9.5 times out of 10 on this blog. Anyway, to make one, you will need:
1 tsp vanilla essence
1-2 tsp double cream or milk (entirely your choice)
140g (oz) softened butter
280g icing sugar
Start with the butter, sugar and vanilla essence in a medium-sized mixing bowl. Be careful to keep the bowl away from heat. You don't want to use liquid butter either. It doesn't help the icing to stay firm; It comes out rather soft and sometimes liquid. That's not what we're looking for; that's better for a glaze if I'm honest. With an electric hand mixer begin to blend the three ingredients together, add the milk you start to come toward the middle of your blending. Stop, scrape down the bowl and continue mixing. When you finish the icing should be thick and have a smooth finish to it.
Of course, if you don't want to make it, you can buy two tubs of storebought icing. When making the buttercream icing for this recipe, you're going to want to double it. I did. I like to make it two batches to ensure that everything gets blended evenly. Sometimes my hand mixer wants to be a lazy cunt and not get its job done. I should get a new one. The one I have is from 1985. It's 6 years older than me...that's mental. It's time to get our icing on.
To get the solid icing like in the middle two mini-cakes, what you need to do is take a bag with a round tip (depending on the size tip you've chosen for this job, you may need to carefully ice around the outside twice) ice the shape of the cake. Outline where you want to fill with icing. You can use a wavy line like I did above or keep a straight line when icing out your sections. Once you have done that, fill in the centre in a bit of a small criss-cross pattern the length of the area; take a butter knife and using it like a cake icing spatula, spread the icing out, covering the entire surface evenly. Or if you want, use a solid colour and ice across the entire surface of the cake; use a silver knife to carefully work the icing over the surface, then decorate with the different size round and star tips. In the bottom left hand, I alternated between the small star tip and the small round tip, icing a nice little two coloured pattern to cover the bottom half of the cake. It started to get a hit hot, that's why it looks a bit soft in the bottom image. To get the striped pattern, ice the cake with the solid white icing. Then starting in the middle, and with a steady hand, create one long, solid, wavy line from the tip of the cake all the way to the base, making sure that you flick your wrist almost at the bottom so that the icing sort of wraps around the bottom. Continue this movement, alternating colours in whatever pattern you so choose. Ice them in any way you want to! Go wild! It's great fun for the kids as well! Have them decorate their own eggs!
1 tsp vanilla essence
1-2 tsp double cream or milk (entirely your choice)
140g (oz) softened butter
280g icing sugar
Start with the butter, sugar and vanilla essence in a medium-sized mixing bowl. Be careful to keep the bowl away from heat. You don't want to use liquid butter either. It doesn't help the icing to stay firm; It comes out rather soft and sometimes liquid. That's not what we're looking for; that's better for a glaze if I'm honest. With an electric hand mixer begin to blend the three ingredients together, add the milk you start to come toward the middle of your blending. Stop, scrape down the bowl and continue mixing. When you finish the icing should be thick and have a smooth finish to it.
Of course, if you don't want to make it, you can buy two tubs of storebought icing. When making the buttercream icing for this recipe, you're going to want to double it. I did. I like to make it two batches to ensure that everything gets blended evenly. Sometimes my hand mixer wants to be a lazy cunt and not get its job done. I should get a new one. The one I have is from 1985. It's 6 years older than me...that's mental. It's time to get our icing on.
To get the solid icing like in the middle two mini-cakes, what you need to do is take a bag with a round tip (depending on the size tip you've chosen for this job, you may need to carefully ice around the outside twice) ice the shape of the cake. Outline where you want to fill with icing. You can use a wavy line like I did above or keep a straight line when icing out your sections. Once you have done that, fill in the centre in a bit of a small criss-cross pattern the length of the area; take a butter knife and using it like a cake icing spatula, spread the icing out, covering the entire surface evenly. Or if you want, use a solid colour and ice across the entire surface of the cake; use a silver knife to carefully work the icing over the surface, then decorate with the different size round and star tips. In the bottom left hand, I alternated between the small star tip and the small round tip, icing a nice little two coloured pattern to cover the bottom half of the cake. It started to get a hit hot, that's why it looks a bit soft in the bottom image. To get the striped pattern, ice the cake with the solid white icing. Then starting in the middle, and with a steady hand, create one long, solid, wavy line from the tip of the cake all the way to the base, making sure that you flick your wrist almost at the bottom so that the icing sort of wraps around the bottom. Continue this movement, alternating colours in whatever pattern you so choose. Ice them in any way you want to! Go wild! It's great fun for the kids as well! Have them decorate their own eggs!
I enjoyed doing this little project. Maybe I'll start experimenting with other cakes. I've got new more ideas up my sleeves. Keep your eyes out for the next Delectables with Dan Easter special! There will only be two this year, sadly. It's not that I don't want to do them because I love to, but it's just financially a bit difficult. Speaking of cake! There will be an all-new Dan and Phil inspired cake for next month and it's going to be a wonderful feature I can't wait to take on. I'm actually really looking forward to this masterpiece. I know it's going to be difficult, but that's the entire point! To get better and challenge myself in the kitchen, learning as I go. Next month will also launch some of the new meal and snack options that will be available on Delectables with Dan! I'm really going to expand this bitch.
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Next travel blog will be up sometime this week, hopefeully before Easter with a few other things. I have so much that I want to try and get out. I'm also working on Glass Hysteria, my latest book which will be released this June! I've got some last minute things to add and work on! More details on that as we get closer to the release date. All updates on that will be done via Twitter or Facebook.
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