For this Easter Bank Holiday Weekend I thought it would be nice to post a cake recipe. But already I have a bit of a headache (which I think could possibly be attributed to an over consumption of chocolate eggs) so I’ve gone for a light, chocolate-free, fruity number! I made some fresh tropical fruit orb thingys to decorate it, which you can see as Easter eggs or as Spring flowers (or just bits of fruit), and then added some paper Avocets. There’s nothing significant about the use of avocets, I just wanted to draw some black and white birds with long legs to give the cake some height and these wetland birds seemed to fit the bill…(sorry it that a bad joke?).

Spring Cake

Ingredients

For the cake:
150g light soft brown sugar
2 large free-range eggs
100g sunflower oil
200g grated carrot (about 3)
Zest of 2 lemons
1 teaspoon baking powder
200g wholemeal flour

For the filling:

300g cream cheese
Juice of 1 lemon
2 tablespoons icing sugar
170g 0% total Greek Yoghurt

For the icing:

8-10 dessert spoons of icing sugar
Juice of 1 lemon

To decorate (optional):

1 Pineapple
1 Melon
1 Mango
Fresh mint sprigs

You will also need 1 small round cake tin, greased with butter and lined with a circle of grease proof paper

Method

1. Pre-heat your oven to 190°C
2. First make the cake: Whisk the eggs and sugar together until pale and fluffy (or in my case until your arm aches because you’ve been making cakes all day and can’t be bothered to wash the electric whisk again)
3. Whisk in the oil then add the grated carrot and lemon zest.
4. Fold in the baking powder and flour until fully combined and then tip everything into your prepared tin
5. Bake for about 25-30 minutes or until a skewer poked into the middle comes out cleanly
6. Turn the cake out onto a rack to cool completely
7. Mix the filling ingredients together in a bowl then put into the fridge to firm up a little while you slice the cooled cake horizontally through the middle
8. Sandwich the cake together with the cheesecake filling and pop the cake into the fridge for 10-15 minutes
9. Meanwhile, mix the icing sugar with the juice of 1 lemon until thick and smooth – you want the consistency to be somewhere between double cream and smooth peanut butter, so add the icing sugar bit by bit to the lemon juice and add more or less if needed
10. Use a melon baller to carve little pastel spheres from a fresh pineapple, mango and melon. Ice the cake and then decorate with the fruit, mint leaves and a gentle snow flurry of icing sugar.

I added some drawings of avocets to mine, which I taped to cocktail sticks, but you can add your own drawings or any other cake decorations you like.

Have a lovely bank holiday. What are you baking this weekend? x