Cadbury Creme Egg Cake

Cadbury Crème Egg-opolis.

This is a perfect cake for the upcoming spring equinox – truly a Cadbury creme egg in cake form! I am devoted to Cadbury creme eggs, you see.

Many Cadbury crème eggs were harmed in the making of this cake.

The filling, from the brilliant Sticky Pinny, tastes just like the filling in a creme egg – it’s uncanny. (I used this same filling to make Cadbury creme egg cupcakes.) I also chopped several Cadbury milk chocolate bars and sprinkled the pieces over each layer of filling to add texture and a chocolate zing. The cake, a dense, dark, rich, incredibly moist chocolate cake from this post, is a perfect accompaniment to the sweet, gooey icing. I iced the outside of the cake in a ganache made from Cadbury milk chocolate bars. Honestly, I thought this cake was going to be mind-blowingly excessive, but it turned out to be quite wonderful. I think this might be one of my favourite cakes ever, which surprises the socks off of me.

I decorated the cake with creme eggs, making sure to encourage the filling to ooze onto the cake, but I felt that the cake looked a little boring.

See? Boring.

I decided to cut out a large wedge to show off the pretty yellow and white filling to its best advantage, and I added more creme eggs with their filling oozing down the cut sides of the cake. I’m very, very pleased with the results, though I’m also quite curious about how you go about decorating this cake! As for the wedge I cut out, well… I made sure there were no witnesses.

See? Not boring! The ganache layer is incredibly thick and delicious! Note the yellow and white filling and the moist, fudgy texture of the cake.

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Cadbury Crème Egg Cake

Ingredients:

For the ganache:
18 oz. Cadbury milk chocolate, chopped
4 TBS butter, cut into 4 pieces
1 1/3 cups heavy cream

For the cake:
1¾ cups plus 2 TBS (9 3/8 oz.) all-purpose flour
1½ cups (4.5 oz.) unsweetened cocoa powder, plus more for dusting pans (unless spraying pans with nonstick spray such as Baker’s Joy)
1¼ cups boiling water + ¼ cup espresso or strong coffee; OR 1 TBS instant espresso or coffee powder + 1½ cups boiling water
¾ cup sour cream
1 TBS vanilla extract
3 sticks unsalted butter, at room temperature
2½ cups plus 2 TBS (18 3/8 oz.) sugar
3 large eggs, at room temperature
1¼ tsp baking soda
¾ tsp salt

For the creme egg fondant filling:
4 1/2 TBS (60 g) butter, softened
3/4 cup (170 g) golden syrup (if you can’t find golden syrup, light corn syrup is an excellent substitute)
3 1/3 cups (375 g) powdered sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 tsp salt
yellow food colouring (preferably in gel form)

For the cream cheese icing:
1 8-oz. package (125 g) cream cheese, softened
2 sticks butter, softened (original recipe calls for 125 g, which is barely over 1 stick)
8 1/2 cups (500 g) powdered sugar

For garnish:
1 package Cadbury crème egg minis
6 – 12 regular Cadbury crème eggs
2 – 4 Cadbury milk chocolate bars, chopped, for sprinkling onto the icing layers

Method:

For the ganache:
Place chocolate and butter in medium heatproof bowl. Heat cream until boiling and pour cream over chocolate and butter. Let stand 2 minutes, then whisk until smooth and incorporated. Mixture may appear grainy; keep whisking and it will smooth out. Cover and set aside to thicken to icing consistency, which takes several hours at room temperature.

For the cake:
Preheat oven to 350˚F. Spray 3 8″ round cake pans* with Baker’s Joy or similar and line the bottoms of the pans with parchment paper; spray the parchment paper. Alternatively, butter the insides of the pans and dust with cocoa powder, shaking out the excess, and line the pans with parchment paper. Note: I highly recommend lining the pans with parchment paper, as the cakes tend very much to resist coming out of the cake pans.

In a medium bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, and salt. Stir with a fork or whisk to blend and set aside.

Combine 1 1/4 cups water and 1/4 cup espresso. The mixture should measure 1 1/2 cups. Heat mixture to boiling in microwave. In a medium bowl, combine the cocoa powder and espresso mixture (or combine the cocoa powder, 1 1/2 cups boiling water, and 1 TBS instant espresso powder). Whisk until smooth; set aside to cool slightly. When cooled down a bit, whisk in the sour cream and vanilla until smooth. Set aside.

In the bowl of an electric mixer, beat the butter on medium-high speed until smooth, about 1 minute. Gradually blend in the sugar and whip on medium-high speed until light and fluffy, 2 – 3 minutes more. Blend in the eggs one at a time, scraping bowl after each addition.

With the mixer on low speed, add the dry ingredients and the sour cream mixture alternately, beginning and ending with the flour mixture and beating each addition just until incorporated.

Divide the batter evenly between the prepared pans.* Bake the cake layers for about 30 – 32 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, rotating the pans during halfway through to ensure even baking. Transfer the baked cake layers to a wire rack and let cool in the pans at least 10 minutes before inverting onto the rack to cool completely. While the cakes are cooling, make the fondant filling and cream cheese icing.

For the creme egg fondant filling:
Beat the butter, syrup, vanilla, and salt in the bowl of an electric mixer with the paddle attachment. (Doing this by hand would be exceedingly difficult and would take much, much longer than using an electric mixer.) Gradually add the powdered sugar (you will probably need to switch to the dough hook attachment at this point, for the mixture will be incredibly thick and heavy), followed by the yellow food colouring to tint the mixture to the desired shade of yellow. Beat until smooth. Cover and set aside.

For the cream cheese icing:
Beat the cream cheese and butter together until light and fluffy and completely blended. Gradually beat in the powdered sugar until smooth and thick. Use immediately, or else cover and store in the refrigerator.

Assembly:
Place one cake layer onto a serving platter or cake circle. Spread half the cream cheese icing onto the cake layer and swirl approximately half of the fondant onto and into the cream cheese icing. Evenly sprinkle 1 – 2 chopped Cadbury milk chocolate bars onto the icing. Top with a second cake layer and repeat the icing procedure; sprinkle with an additional 1 – 2 chopped chocolate bars. Top with the third cake layer and ice cake with thickened ganache. Decorate as desired with Cadbury crème eggs, cracking them open and drizzling their filling down the sides of the cake. If you wish, cut a large wedge out of the cake and drizzle more crème egg filling down the cut sides of the cake. Make that cake look like it fought like hell against an invasion of Cadbury crème eggs! The point is to be silly and have fun with this rather over-the-top cake.

*I own only 2 8″ pans, so I divided the batter evenly between the two pans and the mixing bowl, baked the two layers, and cleaned one of the cake pans to use again for baking the third layer.

Sources: Fondant and cream cheese icing barely adapted from Sticky Pinny; cake from Annie’s Eats; ganache slightly adapted from Annie’s Eats