3/23

Speckled Easter Egg Cake

Cake, Celebrate, Desserts, Easter, Food, Sweet
By Mandi Johnson

Speckled Easter Egg CakeHave you been looking for another excuse to buy Cadbury mini eggs before Easter candy season is over? Personally, my mini egg obsession is out of control, and I think I’ve completely exhausted my list of excuses to buy any more of them. But that didn’t stop me from making this festive cake inspired by my favorite Easter temptations.

Ever since I saw this speckled egg cake on The Cake Blog, I’ve been wanting to try the splattered effect myself, though I’ll admit I was pretty intimidated by it. I thought, “What if I mess up and ruin the whole cake?” But then I thought, “Silly, as long as there’s still butter and sugar involved, all is not lost!” My family surely wouldn’t be opposed to eating an ugly cake, as horrified as I might be to present them with one. But fortunately, the speckled egg effect was very easy to achieve, and very forgiving! Check out how I assembled this cake, which has quickly become a family favorite.

Speckled Easter Egg CakeI made two 8″ white cakes the day before assembling the final cake. They rested overnight wrapped in plastic wrap alongside my pink buttercream frosting and sorted mini eggs. Before assembling the cake, I chopped strawberries and tossed them in glaze for the cake’s filling because that’s what the fam requested. Also, I thought strawberries would taste great with the chocolate eggs and look nice alongside the pink frosting.

To contain the strawberry filling, I piped a little wall of frosting around the edge of the bottom layer of cake. Then I topped it with the second cake layer, piped frosting all over, and smoothed it with a cake frosting spatula.

Speckled Easter Egg CakeYou’ll want to leave the parchment paper under the cake before the splattering process. It gets very messy! Just be sure to refrigerate the cake a bit to allow the frosting to stiffen before removing the parchment paper. You don’t want the frosting to pull away with the parchment paper because you can’t smooth it back in place without messing up the speckled effect.

Speckled Easter Egg CakeCover your work surface with paper towels or newspaper before beginning the splattering. Dilute a little gel food coloring with water and practice on some extra frosting before speckling your cake. I found that if I diluted the gel too much, the color ran a bit. If I used less water and more gel, the splatters were less likely to run. I practiced twice on a little extra frosting before I felt confident with my technique.

Speckled Easter Egg CakeFor my splattering technique, I used the brush shown above, dipped it in the diluted gel, then tapped once or twice into the bowl to get the big drips off the brush. Then I tapped the brush handle with my finger to splatter the color onto the cake. If any spot resulted in an ugly drip, I immediately soaked it up with a piece of paper towel and splattered over the area again.

After creating my border of mini eggs, I did a tiny bit of splattering over the eggs with a barely wet brush, to prevent any dripping from too much gel color on the eggs.

Speckled Easter Egg CakeThat’s all there is to it! You can do as much or as little splattering as you want, and if you prefer, you could use malted eggs or other candy to suit the flavors of the cake you decided to make.

Speckled Easter Egg CakeSpeckled Easter Egg CakeMy favorite thing about any religious holiday is the time we spend enjoying food together as a family. I brought this cake to my in-law’s house and enjoyed it with four generations of people who love sweets. Maybe we’ll make this cake an Easter tradition? I vote yes! –Mandi

Credits // Author and Photography: Mandi Johnson. Photos edited with A Beautiful Mess actions.

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