Prep time:

Cooking time: 20 minutes

Total time:

Serves: 8

225g Butter

225g Golden Caster Sugar

4 Medium Free Range Eggs, seperated

175g Self Raising Flour

1tsp Baking Powder

50g Good Quality Cocoa Powder

2tsp Ground Cinnamon

For the Icing:

50g Butter

50g Soft Cheese or Mascarpone

½tsp Vanilla Extract

225g Icing Sugar

100g Dark Chocolate Chunks or Chopped Dark Chocolate

Mini Eggs and Sugar Flowers, to decorate

It’s lovely to have a cake in a tin for when all the family come home for Easter and this quick all in one version fits my current need for impact without too much hard work. I can even freeze the sponge in advance and ask a daughter to ice it for me, the part they enjoy most!

  1. Preheat the oven to 180˚C gas mark 4. Place the butter, sugar and eggs together in a large mixing bowl. Sift in the flour, baking powder, cocoa and cinnamon and beat until thoroughly mixed. Spoon into three greased and base-lined round 20cm sandwich tins and level the surface.
  2. Bake for 18-20 minutes until well risen and a metal skewer emerges clean from the centre of the cakes. Turn out and cool on wire racks.
  3. For the icing beat together the butter, soft cheese and vanilla extract then beat in the icing sugar until pale and light. Stir in the chocolate chunks. Sandwich the cakes together with the icing and spread the remainder on top. Decorate with mini eggs and sugar flowers.

Aga cooks: For 2 oven Aga’s, cook the cakes on the shelf on the bottom of the roasting oven with the grid tray on the middle set of rungs. For three or four oven Aga’s cook in the middle of the baking oven

Cook’s tip: If I’m really in a hurry I sandwich the cakes with black cherry preserve and whipped cream and dust the top with sifted cocoa.

  • words:
  • pictures: David Merewether

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