We bring you some ideas to make this Easter sweet and cheerful, and that do not require extensive pastry skills. Because this Easter more than any other, we're going to want to make our Easter treats at home.
I'm sure our little ones will appreciate receiving their Easter cake, and while I encourage you to make a traditional Easter cake to preserve traditions and enjoy at home a dough with a unique, exquisite flavor (you have the recipe for it here), there are other alternatives to that one, easy Easter solutions, as bright and cheerful as can be that do not involve, at all, major complications.
1. Bundt cake filled with surprises
The appeal of Bundt pans lies in the fact that, without any extra effort on our part, we get a cake that looks wonderfully beautiful and elegant. They are a very good alternative for making an especially beautiful Easter cake at home.
How to use Bundt pans to celebrate Easter?
- Make your Bundt-style cake; you can use any traditional cake recipe or follow any of the recipes we have on the blog (here you will see them).
- Let it cool, and decide whether you want to give it a simple look by dusting it with powdered sugar, apply a topping (a simple glaze*), or cover it with chocolate, or chocolate with chopped almonds or hazelnuts.
- Fill the inside of the bundt cake with candy or eggs or chocolate coins. Kids will love it! You can also choose to buy a chocolate egg or figure (these days you can even find them in nearby supermarkets) and place it in the center.
- You can also add some floral decorations around it (they make it 100% Easter, thanks to that nod to Palm Sunday), or use candied fruit or crystallized fruit in its preparation (in the photo you can see the chiffon cake with candied oranges, whose recipe you’ll see here).
Remember! You will find several very interesting ingredients for your Easter cakes in our pantry section, like a delicious coconut oil, hazelnut oil, almond oil, and other cold-pressed ones that are the finest, pearl sugar, authentic Madagascar vanilla extract...
You can find a wide range of Nordic Ware Bundt pans here, or maybe the one you like is the one in the photo, it's the Le Creuset Bundt pan.
2. Use a bundt pan
Just as we encouraged you to use a Bundt pan to make your mona in a pretty and easy way, you can use a crown mold (a shallow mold that provides a wide circular space in its center). You can use a ring mold exactly as mentioned above.
Some alternative ideas in this case for your presentation, could be:
- Apply sprinkles or colored chocolate balls on top of the chocolate frosting (Do you know how happy kids get with those cakes covered in a thousand and one colorful sprinkles?)
- You can apply icing in a zigzag pattern across the whole cake; it looks very pretty too!
- You can cover half a circle with one type of icing or coating, and the other half with something else. A good example would be to make half a sponge cake coated in dark chocolate, and the other half in white chocolate (you can decorate both with sprinkles, or one part with sprinkles and the other with colored candy pearls).
- With the help of a piping bag, make little dollops of pastry cream all around the entire perimeter, and on top of each one you can put a chocolate egg, a cherry or strawberry, or colored sprinkles.
In the store we have the De Buyer crown mold and the Le Creuset crown mold, you can use both for this purpose.
3. Easter bunnies
The charm is in the mold! Let a shaped mold brighten the table: prepare traditional yogurt batter, or your favorite cake (it could be almond, carrot, cocoa...), and pour the batter into a bunny-shaped mold of Easter (or ducklings, with the Sweet Tweets mold). You’re almost done! You can finish decorating them with a bit of chocolate or fondant, wrap them in plastic wrap, surround them with chocolates... Or place them on top of another baked sponge cake on a large tray, and it will be an indulgent mona.
If you want to make the bunnies vanilla and lemon, you can see the recipe here.
4. Tall decorated cake
Use a tall pan (a panettone mold or a tall detachable one, like the one from KitchenCraft) to make a very tall cake. Decorate it in a very simple way, with mascarpone cream (mascarpone simply whipped with sugar) and add some decorations, such as chocolate sprinkles, Lacasitos, colorful nuts, fresh fruit...). You can also add some decorative Easter chicks!
Bake some cookies shaped like bunnies, or oval ones shaped like eggs. Right before taking them out of the oven, while they’re still soft, insert a skewer or toothpick and let them cool.
Stick the cookie lollipops into the cake, and you’ll have an Easter cake that’s as delicious as it is pretty.
5. Decorated cupcakes
If there's one sweet treat that's a staple in every home, it's muffins and cupcakes. It will be great fun for the little ones at home to make and decorate these homemade treats!
You can make them plain or you can fill them with cream, chocolate, lemon curd or jam. What will really brighten up the table is the decoration you give it, whether more understated (you can decorate them with nuts and honey) or with chocolates, coins, whipped cream (with fruit or jam on top), fruit, Lacasitos, chocolate shavings... I invite you to look at the photo to get some ideas.
6. Carrot cake with cream cheese
How about making a classic topped with cream cheese? Bake a delicious carrot cake, moist and fluffy, and top it with the cream cheese frosting everyone loves.
You can see the recipe here.
Utensils for making your decorated monas and cupcakes
Here are some utensils that could be useful for your cupcakes and other creations:
- Le Creuset muffin pan or the Kaiser muffin pan.
- El mini muffin pan if you want to make the bite-sized version.
- Paper cupcake liners
- The Birkmann cupcake corer
- Piping bag and tips
- The De Buyer gun is wonderful for all kinds of creations like this. What if you make it in a star-shaped version? With this mold you get the cutest little bites: the one with Le Creuset stars.
- You might be interested in using some ingredients to make the muffins, such as coconut oil, vanilla extract, pearl sugar... I invite you to visit our pantry section.
- If you need whisks, bowls, trays, release spray... You’ll find all the baking accessories you might need here.
- If you need a stand mixer because you know it's your thing, then visit this section -Nothing like a kitchenAid!
Some simple frostings for your cakes
Orange icing: dMelt 20gr of butter together with 20ml of orange juice and, once it is hot, add 60gr of powdered sugar. Mix well until the sugar is completely dissolved
Lemon icing: add the juice of 1 lemon to 120 gr of powdered sugar little by little, stirring continuously until it reaches the right consistency. If that's not enough, add a teaspoon of water.
Chocolate Glaze: 200gr of 70% baking chocolate, 200gr of cream 35% fat and 3 tablespoons of liquid glucose (or Golden Syrup). In a heavy-bottomed saucepan, mix all the ingredients and bring to medium heat, stirring well until everything has dissolved and we obtain a thick cream. Remove from the heat and set aside. (Note that this glaze hardens as it cools; do not pour it too hot, as it will tend to run, nor too thick, or it won't spread easily).
I hope all these ideas inspire you to make some of the prettiest homemade ones. Don’t forget to tell us in the comments what other easy and beautiful alternatives we can make at home at this time of year. Sharing ideas is the loveliest thing!
