Speckled Egg Chocolate Cake

I don't know about you but I love chocolate cake with thick rich buttercream frosting. I pretty much make this recipe whenever I have an excuse to make cake. I saw this really clever Easter cake here and thought I would try my hand at something similar but using my go to never fail chocolate cake recipe. Read on for the recipe and more pictures. 

To begin, grab your ingredients:

2 cups sugar
1 3/4 cup flour
3/4 cup cocoa
1 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 tsp baking soda

2 eggs
1/2 cup vegetable oil 
1 cup milk
2 tsp vanilla essence 

1 cup boiling water

In a large bowl combine all the dry ingredients. Then add the eggs, oil, milk and vanilla and combine using an electric mixer for two minutes. Stir in the boiling water until completely incorporated. The batter will be very runny. 

Pour batter into three prepared small round cake tins. Bake at 160 fan force until toothpick inserted comes out clean.

Cool on a wire rack until room temperature, then cut off any doming from the cakes. Try to make each cake as level as possible.

To make the buttercream, simply whip 1 x 250g stick of unsalted butter with 3 - 3.5 cups icing sugar, until smooth. Add gel food colouring and whip until completely mixed in. 

Once your cakes and buttercream are ready, begin to stack each layer with buttercream between.

Then once each layer has been added, crumb coat the cake. 

Once crumb coated, place in the refrigerator for 1 hour. 

Finish frosting your cake and remember not to worry if you get a few crumbs in the frosting, it adds to the speckled look!

The kids will love getting stuck into the next bit... once frosted, mix 1 teaspoon cocoa with 1 tablespoon vanilla extract and using a clean cooking paint brush, flick drops of the mixture onto the cake, which will give it its speckled appearance. 

Top with chocolate speckled eggs!

Happy Easter!