5 Easy Easter Baking Ideas
Easter is not as big for me as Christmas but I do still like to do some Easter baking so I came up with 5 easy easter baking ideas.
This year I chose the following quick and delicious treats.:-
- Cupcakes (2 varieties)
- Easter Crackle baskets
- Cheesecake filled eggs
- Easter Bark
No 1 of 5 easy easter baking ideas – EASTER CUPCAKES
I made two different varieties of chocolate cupcakes using one recipe. These cupcakes are super easy but really cute. I made them using my vintage chocolate cake recipe but didn’t use the fudge icing this time. I wanted to make the icing look like grass so chose to use chocolate ganache topped with cookie crumbs coloured green with icing colour.
To easily change a basic recipe into something special I like to fill my cupcakes. It also means you can use one recipe and get several different flavour combinations. This time I chose Nutella and caramel.
To make the “grass” I used a food processor to grind 1/2 a packet of plain biscuits. I used Arnott’s Marie biscuits. I then added green food colouring gel to a small amount of vodka to make it more liquid. This did take a fair bit of stirring to get all the crumb coloured but I like how it came up.
TO DECORATE THE CUPCAKES
To fill the cupcakes I just use a small round cookie cutter to remove the middle of the cupcake. Don’t throw this away as you want it to put back into the cupcake after you put in the filling. In terms of the fillings to use, there are many beautiful recipes online for cake fillings and they are delicious. This time though I decided to make it easy on myself and chose Nutella and Caramel (I like this one). Use one teaspoon of filling per cupcake and then replace the circle you removed. Gently push it in.
I then iced the cupcakes with whipped chocolate ganache and dipped the top in the biscuit crumbs. To decorate the cupcakes I used small Lindt bunnies for the Nutella ones and Caramello Easter Eggs for the caramel ones. I also sprinkled some flower cake sprinkles on the tops.
Easy Chocolate Cake with Old Fashioned Fudge Sauce
Equipment
- Stand Mixer or Hand Mixer
Ingredients
Cake
- 1 cup self raising flour
- 1 cup caster sugar
- 3 tbsp cocoa
- 90 grams butter
- 2 eggs
- 1/2 cup milk
- 1 tsp vanilla
Fudge Sauce
- 1 cup caster sugar
- 1 cup boiling water
- 1 tbsp butter
- 1 tbsp cocoa
- 2 tbsp cornflour blended with 1 tbsp cold water to form a liquid
Instructions
Cake
- Preheat oven to 170°C (fan forced);
- Grease and line your 20cm round cake tin;
- Combine all ingredients in your mixer and beat on high for 3 minutes;
- Pour in to your tin and bake for 35 minutes. Test your cake at the 30 minute mark as different ovens may cook faster;
- Cool cake and then pour over chocolate fudge sauce and let set.
Fudge Sauce
- Place sugar, water, butter and cocoa in a small saucepan. Bring to the boil while stirring to dissolve the sugar.
- Whisk in cornflour mix and whisk over medium/high heat until mixture comes to the boil and sauce thickens. You want the sauce to be thick but still pourable.
- Pour slowly over cake to required thickness.
Notes
- To make the cake extra moist you can poke holes in the top of the cake so the fudge is absorbed in to the centre of the cake. I usually use a chopstick for this;
- If you have leftover fudge sauce you can keep it in the fridge for three days. You can heat the sauce in the microwave for 20-30 seconds on high and then pour over ice cream, delicious!!!
- If you don’t have caster sugar you can substitute regular sugar in this recipe.
Whipped Chocolate Ganache
Equipment
- Stand mixer
Ingredients
- 200 grams dark chocolate
- 1/2 cup cream
Instructions
- Heat cream until boiling.
- Pour cream over chocolate and allow to sit for about 5 minutes.
- Stir until mixed well.
- Refrigerate for an hour.
- Beat with a stand mixer until light and fluffy.
EASTER CRACKLE BASKETS
I have been making these little treats for many many years. They were my go to for easter goodies for Em and her friends. If you’re looking for a recipe that will delight the kiddos this is the one.
Back in the “old” days I used to use curling ribbon as the basket handle but decided to try and include an edible one this time. My first idea was fruit strings but unfortunately they didn’t have those at my Woollies so I went for something I hadn’t seen before Haribo Balla Stixx. They worked ok and added extra flavour but when I make them next time I would probably look for something else for two reasons:-
- They are fairly thick and I like to use mini cupcake cases;
- Some of them actually split at the bend after a while.
The first step is to coat your cupcake cases in melted dark chocolate.
Next up make a chocolate crackle mix (recipe below). You then need to position your handle of choice and spoon the crackle mix into the cases. Use your spoon to make sure the mixture is pressed well into the case so that it secures the handle. When all cases are filled with crackle mixture top them off with some mini eggs. Refrigerate until firm.
Chocolate Crackle Easter Baskets
Ingredients
- 120 grams dark melts (melted)
- 20 handles of your choice (See notes)
- 2 cups rice bubbles
- 1/4 cup cocoa
- 1/2 cup desiccated coconut
- 1/2 cup icing sugar
- 125 grams copha (melted)
- 40 mini easter eggs
- 20 mini cupcake cases
Instructions
- Brush melted chocolate evenly over bases and sides of cupcake cases.
- Place your handle into the case and push into the chocolate. Allow to set slightly while making the chocolate crackle mix.
- Combine rice bubbles, cocoa, coconut and icing sugar in a bowl. Add copha and mix until well combined.
- Fill each cupcake case with the crackle mix and press firmly.
- Top each case with two mini easter eggs. Place in refrigerator until firm.
Notes
- Curling Ribbon
- Fruit strings
- Licorice strips cut into thin pieces
EASTER EGG CHEESECAKE
I loooooove cheesecake so every celebration needs to include some. This year I made my favourite unbaked cheesecake filling and served it in half an easter egg.
This recipe has been adjusted to make enough filling for two large hollow eggs and one small egg. You will need to halve each of the eggs. Be careful when doing this, make sure the eggs are at room temperature and use a serrated edge knife just doing a small area at a time. After I halved the eggs I warmed the bottom slightly with my blow torch just so when I placed them on the baking paper they would have a flatter bottom. You can also do this to attach broken bits like I had to on one of mine 😉. NOTE it’s just a light pass of the blow torch otherwise you’ll have chocolate sauce!!!
If you don’t have a blow torch don’t worry its really not necessary it just means your egg will wobble a bit but thats not the end of the world. You could try heating a plate in the microwave and placing the chocolate on it for a few seconds to soften the chocolate. Again be careful because it doesn’t take much to melt room temperature chocolate – learnt that the hard way 😂.
Whilst I didn’t put a biscuit base in the eggs I did make a little so that I could use as decoration on top.
Cheesecake Easter Egg Filling
Equipment
- Stand mixer
- Food Processor (if making biscuit crumb)
Ingredients
- 3/4 cup whipping cream
- 250 grams cream cheese
- 1/4 cup caster sugar
- 1 teasp vanilla extract
- 1 teasp lemon juice
- 1/4 cup sour cream
- Chocolate Bunnies and Easter eggs for decoration
- Caramel Sauce to drizzle on top
Biscuit Crumbs for Decoration
- 1/4 pkt plain sweet biscuits Milk Arrowroot, Marie
- 1 teasp brown sugar
- 2 tbsp butter (melted)
Instructions
- Beat cream on high speed with a whisk until stiff peaks form.
- In another bowl, beat cream cheese, sugar, vanilla and lemon juice for about 2 minutes using paddle attachment, until creamy and fluffy. Add in sour cream and mix well.
- Gently fold the cream into the cream cheese. Mix through until combined.
- Divide between four easter egg halves.
Biscuit Crumbs
- Process biscuits to make crumbs.
- Add sugar and butter and process again.
- Add the crumbs to the top of the cheesecake.
- Decorate as desired.
EASTER BARK
Chocolate bark is always a welcome gift at Christmas time so I thought I would make some for friends for Easter.
Its really easy and the decoration is where you can get creative.
I’m not going to do a recipe card for this one because I don’t think its necessary. The ingredients are as follows:-
- 300g Dark or milk chocolate. I actually used a combination because I didn’t have enough of either one.
- 300g White chocolate.
- Decorations such as chocolate bunnies (I used these ones), different flavoured mini eggs – I used Caramilk, Oreo, Turkish Delight and Top Deck (Idid cut these in half as I felt they would be too big for the bark, Cadbury coloured eggs. You could also use all the one flavour if you prefer. I then also used some coloured cake sprinkles.
To melt the chocolate place the white and dark (or milk) chocolate in separate microwave safe bowls or jugs. Melt in the microwave on 50% power for 30 second intervals. Stirring after each burst. It will take around 3 goes to melt the chocolate depending on your microwave. DON’T be tempted to use a higher power as you will only burn the chocolate. Slow and steady is definitely recommended in this case.
Prepare a baking tray by lining it with baking paper. Pour your dark or milk chocolate over the tray and spread until its as even as possible.
Drizzle with the white chocolate and using a toothpick or skewer swirl the white chocolate through the dark chocolate as shown in the picture above. The next part is the fun bit. Place the bunnies and easter eggs on the chocolate base. When doing this make sure you don’t overload the chocolate as you will need to break it into pieces once its set. To finish shake on some cake sprinkles.
When the chocolate has set break into pieces of various sizes to serve. I decorated cellophane bags to gift the bark to friends. Again I used my Cricut Maker to do the labels.
I hope you enjoyed my 5 quick Easter baking ideas. If you need some easy Easter decorating ideas visit this post.
