Speckled Egg Cake

A decadent chocolate mud cake, layered with multi-coloured swiss meringue buttercream

This is not just an ordinary cake! It is a six tier death by chocolate cake decorated with all the speckled eggs I could get my hands on. I am a little obsessed with speckled eggs, and if you aren’t I am questioning whether we can be friends!

Mud cakes are contentious in our household. I prefer cakes with a soft and light crumb. This mud cake however, has a super dense and fudgy crumb, thanks to about half a kilogram of chocolate in the batter!!! Adding swiss meringue buttercream to the otherwise dark chocolate cake helps to lend some sweetness without being overly cloyingly sweet.

Because it is Easter and I was feeling slightly festive, I decided to make this a speckled egg themed cake. I used the colours of the speckled-eggs for the different colours of buttercream layers in the cake, and piled the speckled eggs onto the cake on the outside. I also added speckles to the cake with some cocoa and vanilla essence – super easy!

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CHOCOLATE MUD CAKE

• 500g butter, room temperature
• 400g dark chocolate, roughly chopped
• 700ml boiling water
• 1 tablespoon coffee
• 500g muscavado sugar
• 4 large eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla essence
• 480g self raising flour
• 60g cocoa

METHOD

1. Preheat the oven to 170 degrees Celcius. Grease and line six , 18cm round cake tins.
2. Place the butter and chocolate in a bowl and pour over the hot coffee, to melt the chocolate and butter. Make sure everything is well melted.
3. Add in the sugar and mix until incorporated.
4. Add in the eggs and vanilla and continue to mix.
5. Finally, add in the self-raising flour and cocoa and fold through.
6. The batter is a liquid one, so do not worry.
7. Bake for between 40 – 50 minutes, or until a skewer inserted comes out clean.
8. Let the cake cool in the tin for 15 minutes, before turning out onto a cooling rack to cool completely.

WHITE CHOCOLATE SWISS MERINGUE BUTTERCREAM

• 600g caster sugar
• 9 large egg whites
• 200g good quality white chocolate
• 2 teaspoon of oil
• 950g salted butter, at room temperature, cut into 2cm cubes*

*I use salted butter, as I like the balance the salt adds. If you prefer to control the amount of salt, use unsalted butter and add a pinch of salt to taste.

METHOD

1. Melt the chocolate and oil in a microwave, in short 20 second bursts, and set aside to cool.
2. Set a pot of simmering water onto the stove, on medium heat. Place a bowl over the pot of water, to create a bain marie. Place the sugar and egg whites in the bowl and stir until the sugar has dissolved into the egg white. Do not vigorously mix the mixture, as we do not want to aerate it too much. If you run a bit of the mixture between your forefinger and thumb, there should be no sugar granules.
3. Transfer the sugar and egg mixture to your stand mixer (you can use an electric hand beater too) and whip for a good 10 minutes, until a glossy meringue has formed and the sides of the bowl have cooled down.
4. Slowly add in the butter, a few cubes at a time. Let incorporate fully, before adding more. You should then have a smooth and silky buttercream.

TO ASSEMBLE

• 1 teaspoon cocoa powder
• 2 – 3 teaspoons vanilla essence
• pink, purple, green, blue and yellow food colouring
• speckled eggs to decorate

1. When ready to stack, fill and decorate your cake, slice off the tops of the chocolate cake so that they have flat tops.
2. Weigh out five bowls of icing, weighing 125g each. Colour them with different colours for the different layers in the cake.
3. Colour the remaining icing duck egg blue.
4. Stack and fill the cake with the different colours of buttercream, and frost the outside.
5. Dilute the cocoa with the vanilla essence.
6. Use a soft bristled brush, holding it close to the cake and flicking this vanilla onto the cake to give it a speckled-egg look.
7. Decorate with speckled eggs and enjoy 🙂

Recipe by adventureswithsugar.com