Easter Mini Egg Cheesecake | Baking

Hi everyone! Happy Easter! I hope that you are all having a wonderful day, filled with lots of chocolate (or other yummy goodies if chocolate is not your thing!). One of my favourite things to do on Easter Sunday, and on the days leading up to it, is to bake. There are so many scrumptious Easter snacks that can be incorporated into cakes or cookies, etc., so the possibilities are pretty much endless. I have been wanting to make something using Cadbury's Mini Eggs for so so long. They are the best thing about Easter in my opinion! Not only do they taste delicious, but they also smell amazing (like honestly, someone needs to make a mini egg scented candle already!) and look so pretty! I had been brain-storming ideas for a few weeks, mostly with the help of Pinterest which is a fabulous tool for creative inspiration, but I just couldn't decide what to make! Then about a week ago now, facebook came to the rescue. A video by a blog called Taming Twins popped on my news feed, featuring the most delicious looking cheesecake ever! I knew right away that I wanted to have a go at making my own, especially since I'd never made a cheesecake myself before. So my post today will be a recipe one, and I hope you all enjoy it! 

Something that I just loved about this cheesecake is how pretty it looked and I was definitely a little worried that my attempt wouldn't look as aesthetically pleasing, because I almost always mess up a little when it comes to decorating my baked goods, oops! However, this time around I am really happy with how my mini egg cheesecake turned out!! Keep reading to find out how I made my cheesecake :) Oh, and here's a link to the original post where I got the recipe. 

What you'll need to make your Easter Mini Egg Cheesecake 

♥ 140g unsalted butter 

♥ 280g digestive biscuits 

♥ 2 tubs of 280g full-fat Philadelphia cream cheese

♥ 600ml double cream (550ml for your cheesecake & 50ml for the topping)

♥ 140g icing sugar

♥ 5 standard bags of Cadbury's Mini Eggs- 360g for your cheesecake & the remaining for decorating the top 

(the originally recipe used much more for the topping, although together using 7 bags VS my 5). 

♥ Any flavouring you may want to add- the original recipe added lemon juice & I choose to add vanilla instead. 

♥ You will also need a baking tin that has a removal base. The original recipe recommended a 7'' one, and I managed to find one at a local pound store for £2.50. 

How to make your Easter Mini Egg Cheesecake 

1. I recommend that you start by chopping/crushing your mini eggs, that will be added into your cheesecake mix later on. The original recipe recommended chopping them in half, but I found this difficult. Our knives just weren't sharp enough and I was having too many close calls almost chopping off my fingers XD so I decided to crush my mini eggs up using the end of a rolling pin. I weighed out 360g of mini eggs, added them into a large mixing bowl and literally bashed them with my rolling pin, until all of the eggs were broken up into quarters. 

2. Put your crushed mini eggs to the side in another bowl, and weigh out 280g of digestive biscuits into your large mixing bowl. Crush them up until you have a mix of crumps that resembles lumpy sand. I used the end of my rolling pin again to do this. 

3. Next, weigh out your unsalted butter (140g) into a microwave-safe bowl. Set your microwave to two minutes to melt your butter, checking it every so often and stirring the butter until it's all melted. Now, pour the melted butter into the digestive biscuit crumb and stir thoroughly. Add this mixture into your baking tin and flatten it down, creating the base of your cheesecake. 

4. Now it's time to make the main mixture for your cheesecake. Start by whipping 550ml of the double cream in your large mixing bowl. I used an electric whisk to do this. It takes a while for the liquid to look like whipped cream, but just keep at it until it forms a thick mixture. 

5. When this is done, you can add the other ingredients into the bowl. I added the two tubs of cream cheese first and gently folded it with the whipped cream a little, then I put in the 140g of icing sugar and did the same until it was mixed in thoroughly. Finally I added in the crushed mini eggs that I had prepared earlier. After stirring them into the creamy mixture, I finished off by adding vanilla flavouring until I was happy with the taste of the mixture. 

6. Spoon the cheesecake mixture into the baking tin, pressing it down to fit as much in as you can. Smooth out the top using a palette knife or spatula (like I did). Then pop it straight into the fridge to chill for at least 2 hours. I left my cheesecake in overnight. 

7. The last step to your Easter Mini Egg Cheesecake is decorating the top. Once you've taken your cheesecake out of the fridge, you can remove it from the baking tin. You might want to loosen your cake from the side of the tin with a knife before releasing the base too. Then it's time to whip up the 50ml of double cream left over from the cake mixture. Finally, adding this to the top of your cake, then sprinkling the remaining mini eggs onto this whipped cream. 

And without further ado.. here's my completed Mini Egg Cheesecake!

I think my cheesecake looks so cute! If a cake can look cute, haha :D What do you guys think? I cannot wait to tuck into it after I've had my dinner :) It smells delicious, and I'm sure it's going to taste just as good as it looks! I'm very glad that it turned out this well, and it's definitely encouraged me to experiment making/baking more cheesecakes in the future. Even though, Easter is almost over... all of the mini eggs will still be available for the next couple of weeks so you can all still have a go at making your own Easter cheesecake. I'd love for you to tag me in any photos if my post does inspire you to make one for yourself, so I can check them out :) I hope you all have an awesome rest of your day!

Thankyou for reading!

♥

Have you made any yummy treats this Easter? 

Did you blog all about it? Please comment with links to your post so I can have a read!

What's your favourite Easter Treat? Are you Team Mini Egg or Team Creme Egg? 

Did you enjoy this post? Then check out these:

| Easter Baking | Homemade Fudge | Chocolate Cake Recipe | 

Celebrating National Chocolate Cake Day | Baking

Happy Saturday lovelies! It has been absolutely ages since I blogged!! Just when I thought I'd gotten to a better place with my insomnia, I finally got my period. If you're a regular reader of my blog, then you might remember when I blogged all about getting my contraceptive implant removed; since August 2016 I have only had one other proper period so this latest surprise appearance was somewhat of a shock to my body and it certainly responded accordingly. I have felt so drained and groggy all the time, ugh >.< I was definitely relieved at first because I was getting a little worried, but after a few days it just wanted it to stop so I'm glad that it's finally over, haha! Anyhow, apologies for my lack of activity once again! :D I know that 2018 blogging-wise has not gotten off to a good start, but I have plenty of time to fix that! And so on with today's post...

If you didn't know, today is National Chocolate Cake Day. To be honest, all of these interesting national 'holidays' and celebrations are a US tradition but I really like how there's so dates marked to appreciate the most random of things so I don't care if I'm from the UK, I'm still going to join it with the occasion, because there's never a reason not to celebrate something! Especially when that something involves chocolate and cake, two of the best things in existence, wouldn't you agree? I spent this afternoon baking and so I thought I'd share the recipe, so that you can have a go at making a chocolate cake yourselves :) I hope you enjoy reading, and if you don't have some chocolate cake in your lives right now, take a trip to the shops and get some! 

I originally wanted to make a Devils Food Cake, because they are super chocolatey and make me think of the iconic cake from the movie Matilda :) however the ingredients was more than I could justify spending at the moment, so I went back to my usual baking tradition of using a recipe from Be Ro. My mom always talked about recipes from Be Ro when I was growing up and so whenever I wanted to make something that's traditional, then I take a look for one of their recipes. So that's where I found the chocolate cake recipe that I used today. You can find the original one here but I'm still going to write it up for you on this post :) 

What you'll need to make your own chocolate cake

♥ 200g self-raising flour

♥ 225g caster sugar

♥ 25g cocoa powder

♥ a pinch of salt (half a teaspoons worth)

♥ 100g margarine

♥ 2 medium eggs

♥ 5 tablespoons of water

♥ 5 tablespoons of evaporated milk 

♥ some vanilla essence 

Also you'll need two baking tins, a mixing bowl and other baking utensils for mixing and measuring out your ingredients. 

What you'll need to make the milk chocolate icing/frosting 

This is also a Be Ro recipe & I doubled it, using one batch for the middle of the cake and the other for decorating the top and sides :) Here's the ingredients for one batch: 

♥ 1 tablespoons of cocoa powder 

♥ 250g icing sugar 

♥ 3 tablespoons of hot milk

♥ 60g margarine

♥ a teaspoons worth of vanilla essence

Then, whatever you want to add to your cake for decoration :) As you can see from my first photograph, I opted with chocolate fingers and maltesers for my chocolate cake. 

This mixture tasted so delicious and was really tough not to eat! I love how it looks like angel delight too *nom nom* 

How To Make Your Chocolate Cake 

1. Firstly, set your oven at 180C (Gas Mark 4) to pre-heat it whilst you are preparing your cake mixture/batter. Also grease your baking trays. I just use a little margarine for this and coat the entire base and sides a little.

2. To start your cake mixture off, add the flour, sugar, cocoa and a pinch of salt into a large mixing bowl and stir them together until everything is mixed thoroughly. 

3. This next part is a little messy, but I love it! It reminds me of making crumbles when I was a teenager in my high school food tech classes. You add the margarine into your mixing bowl and rub it in with your hands. Basically you mix and rub the ingredients together, rolling it between your fingers and thumb, until you have created an almost crumb-like mixture. I think it's really fun, haha :) 

4. If you're using an electric whisk then for the next step you can just add the ingredients and whisk it, but I prefer to mix my ingredients by hand so this is what I did. I cracked my eggs into a bowl and whisked them up with a fork, then I added the milk to the egg mix and continued to stir until it was all mixed together. 

5. Now, you pour this egg-milk liquid into your big mixing bowl with the other ingredients, and stir it until it looks like the chocolate paste in my photograph above. Add a few drops vanilla into this as well and give it all a good stir. 

6. You can then separate the mixture as evenly as you can between your two baking tins, and cook for 30-35 minutes. Mine were done in 30 minutes :) 

Method for the Milk Chocolate Frosting

1. Wait until your cakes are cool, then remove them for the baking trays and pop them onto a plate, before starting your frosting :)

2. Add your icing sugar into a mixing bowl first. Then, pop your margarine into the microwave for approx. 30 seconds, stopping and stirring at 15 seconds, until it is liquid. 

3. Now, Add a little milk into a jug or a microwave bowl for 2 minutes, but sure to keep an eye on it stopping it at a minute to check and such. Once your milk is hot, set it aside until needed. The next step is to add a tablespoon of cocoa powder into your melted butter and stir until it's thoroughly blended. 

4. I then made a little hole with a spoon in the centre of my icing sugar, and poured the chocolatey mix in. I added my three tablespoons of the hot milk to it and a teaspoons worth of vanilla essence, then it's mixing time!

5. Keep mixing until you are left with a thick chocolate icing paste, which is delicious by the way! I recommend eating some right away :p haha! It's thick enough to spread onto your cake using a knife. 

6. As I mentioned earlier, I used an entire batch for the centre (which was probably a little too much but I'm happy with my 'death by chocolate' cake XD). Then, I repeated this milk chocolate frosting recipe all over again, and used this lot to spread all over the top of the cake and down the sides too. 

7. Lastly, I covered the sides of my cake with chocolate fingers and popped a few maltesers on top in a random pattern, and ta-da! I have a very chocolate cake! Keep scrolling to see my masterpiece XD (FYI, it's super messy!). 

So, here's my finished chocolate cake for National Chocolate Cake Day! As you can see, whenever I make a cake it never turns out as pretty as I intend. I only had square tins and I wanted a more round shape so I attempted to cut the cake to a better shape without using anything circular to trace around :D and this is the result. I also didn't have anything to smooth down the chocolate frosting so it doesn't look neat but it tastes amazing so I don't mind. Another mistake I made was because of my crappy spatial awareness, I put my cake more towards the bottom of the oven instead of in the middle like you're supposed to. Thus I had some burn parts on the bottom of my cakes, that I had to cut off. Despite all of my baking failures, I had an awesome time making my cake and so it doesn't really matter. Baking is all about the fun and the yummy creations at the end of it. It may not look like a cake from a magazine but it tasted scrumptious! What do you think guys? I hope that you all enjoyed today's post :) Have a lovely weekend! 

Thankyou for reading! 

♥

Tell me all about your baking 'disasters' guys!