Life Unexpected: Easter Cake Anyone?

Monday 1 April 2013

Easter Cake Anyone? - Recipe

After a visit to Panasonic head office last week I was feeling inspired to cook up a storm in the kitchen with my Panasonic Combi Oven.

By storm I do of course mean cake... Cake has become a very popular choice of food in our household since this machine arrived in our midst back in December, and I thought with Easter on the horizon that this really would be the perfect accompaniment to our Easter Sunday.

I followed the recipe for the Easter Bunny Cake on the Ideas Kitchen, I find many very tasty recipes here and I love how they are all adapted to cook up in the combi oven.

What you will need

2 x 18 cm (7″) greased cakes tins

Your toddler is not essential....

The Recipie

- 175g butter

- 175g caster sugar

- 3 eggs

- 175g self raising flour

- 200g icing sugar

- 2-3 tbsp water

Leo and I often cook up cakes together, and it is a activity that Leo has begun to love. Cooking up a cake mixture means that there will soon be a bowl full of 'yum' to munch up and plenty of spoons to lick clean (if he can get there before Daddy does!)

With Leo sat in his booster seat ready to help me cook, we prepared everything we would need to get started.

Firstly we pre heated the combi oven on CONVECTION 180°C.

Leo watched as I creamed the butter and sugar together until it was pale and fluffy. (This can get messy, I do advise to have a sink full of warm soapy water to wash your hands promptly after!)

I cracked the eggs into a separate bowl and mixed them together. Then Leo and I added the egg a little bit at a time beating thoroughly with the electric whisk after each addition.

We folded the flour in to the cake mixture a little bit at a time to avoid any lumps and then took the electric whisk to it once again to get a lovely fluffy mixture.

With the cake mixture ready to cook up, we spooned it into the two prepared tins and leveled off with a knife. Our tins were not identical but I simply spooned the mixture alternatively into each tin to ensure that they both had the same amount inside.

Once the tins are ready with the cake mixture you can pop it into the oven. If like me you are using a combi oven you can leave it in for around 20-25 minutes or until cooked. If not you can use this as a guide and just keep checking the cake until it looks ready and check by putting a knife through the centre. If the cake leaves mixture on the knife it needs a little longer.

Once the cakes are cooked and have cooled down you can take them out of the tins and sandwich them together with cream and jam. Then it is time to whizz together the icing sugar (follow the instructions on the box) - what you want is a spreadable paste that you will apply all over the top of the cake.

Here is where we deviated slightly to.the recipe, instead of putting an Easter Bunny on the cake Leo and I decided that some Spring time flowers would look perfect dotted around the edge of the cake. And of course we could not forget some Cadbury's Mini Eggs. So in true Easter style we out a handful of eggs in the centre of the cake and a few around the outside.