Happy belated easter

I had macaroons for Christmas, hot cross buns for Good Friday, and now red velvet for Easter. In the shape of eggs of course. Eventhough it's almost a week too late, I hope everyone still in the mood for Easter spirit. Sorry, life keeps getting in the way and I'm behind on my posts. Now you know why I made the red velvet cupcake the other day.

I got my hands full with all the hot cross buns and church on Easter weekend, so I didn't have time to properly decorate the eggs. Colouring chocolates is just not the extra work I needed when I'm trying to juggle between masses, bread baking and catching up on some much needed sleep after a crazy week. If you've been paying attention, I had a super hectic week before Easter. That's why my single most important mission during the 4 days Easter long weekend plus 2 extra days of annual leave was to do "absolutely nothing". Well, nothing that I don't like anyways. Sipping coffee in a quaint little cafe with a good book or a good company and sleeping in is what I intended to do for the whole Easter break.

So, to avoid more work with the chocolates, I did what I do best, paint. I used oil candy colouring to decorate the eggs. I was so lazy, I only painted these 5 eggs and left the rest plain white and brought it to the Easter dinner on Good Friday.

I used Stephanie Jarowski from joyofbaking's recipe for the red velvet cake and Jennifer Graham from Crabapple Cupcake's for the cream cheese frosting.

Happy belated Easter everyone!

Cream cheese frosting

125g unsalted butter, softened
400g cream cheese, softened
1.5tsp vanilla essence
6 cups icing sugar

cream the butter for 1-2 mins. Add cream cheese, vanilla and 3 cups of the sifted icing sugar and beat for a further 3 mins or until the mixture is light and fluffy. Gradually add the remaining icing sugar until the mixture is light and fluffy and of a spreadable consistency.

Red velvet Cake Chocettes

Red velvet cake. you can find the recipe here
Cream cheese frosting
1 packet of white chocolate (use compound for a shortcut, so you don't have to temper the chocolate)

Bake the red velvet cake.
Make frosting.
Both of them can be made one days in advance. Keep in the fridge in an airtight container.
In a large bowl, crumble cake using your hands or a mixer. Mix in frosting gradually until the mixture is moist. Carefull not to add too many frosting or not you will have trouble shaping the chocettes. Take one teaspoon at a time and shape the dough into egg shaped. Put in the fridge for an 30 minutes to firm it up. While it's chilling in the fridge, melt the chocolate using a double boiler or in the microwave. Dip the chocettes in the chocolate and put in a baking tray to set. Try to place the eggs with the bottom of the egg touching the tray so you will end up with a nice smooth egg-shaped chocolates. Decorate by colouring chocolates and piping it or if you're too lazy, just paint some design with oil colouring.