Recipe | Mini egg cookie layer cake

Two giant chocolate chip cookies crammed full of Cadbury mini eggs and sandwiched together with vanilla buttercream

All thanks to Kaisha at The Writing Garnet for sending me a link to the brilliant Jane’s recipe for mini egg cookie cake. I hadn’t planned any Easter-themed baking, but I couldn’t resist trying this one. If you haven’t visited Jane’s Patisserie yet, I highly recommend it. All her recipes are wonderful.

I only made a small change to her original recipe. Before you bake, please note you are making two large cookies and putting them together. Although it’s called a “cake” it doesn’t have the consistency of cake. Instead it’s an enormous chewy biscuit packed full of chocolate chunks and Cadbury mini eggs.

Ingredients

550 g / 19.4 oz plain flour (yes, it is loads, but it’ll work, honest!)
2 tsp bicarbonate of soda (baking soda)
2 tbsp corn flour
230 g / 8.1 oz butter at room temperature
110 g / 3.9 oz granulated sugar
270 g / 9.5 oz light brown sugar
2 eggs (large of medium)
1 tsp vanilla extract / essence
100 g / 3.5 oz milk chocolate chips (the original recipe calls for 150 g but the ones I found came in 100 g bags, so I just got one bag. Alternatively, you could buy a 100g chocolate bar and chop it up)
100 g / 3.5 oz white chocolate chips
300 g / 10.6 oz chocolate mini eggs (this is a large bag of Cadburys mini eggs. Obviously any chocolate mini eggs will work, and by “mini egg” I mean a small chocolate egg in a candy shell)

For decoration

130 g / 4.2 oz butter at room temperature
260 g / 9.2 oz butter
1 tsp vanilla extract/essence

Method

Pre-heat the oven to 190 degrees C (170 fan)/ Gas Mark 5 / 375 degrees F. Grease and line two 20-cm/ 8-inch round cake tins.

Mix together the flour, bicarbonate of soda and the cornflour in a bowl. Set aside.

In another large bowl, melt the butter. You can do this in a pan over a low heat on the stove or use the microwave. If you go for the second option, go slowly. I start with one 30-second burst, stir, another 30-second burst, etc. until the melted butter is smooth and all lumps have gone.

Add the two sugars to the melted butter and mix for 2 minutes until the mixture is smooth. Use a stand mixer if you have one or electric hand beaters. Add the eggs and vanilla, beating the mixture again until smooth.

Add the dry ingredients to the butter, sugar and egg mixture and stir until combined. Don’t panic at how thick the mixture becomes – it’s supposed to be like that! Stir in the chocolate chips and half the mini eggs.

Spoon your thick cookie dough mixture into the prepared baking tins. I used the scales to make sure I had half the mixture in each tin, but you can do it by eye.

Set aside about 12 mini eggs – you’ll need these for decorating the top of the cake later.

Press down the mini egg cookie layer cake mixture into the tins until you have an even layer. Take the remaining mini eggs and press them into the top of the mixture so they are slightly visible. This way you can better ensure an even distribution of mini eggs throughout the layers.

Bake for 25 minutes until the top of your cookie cake layers look dry and there is no wobble when you move the tins.

Leave the cookies to cool in the tins for 10 minutes before transferring to a rack to finish cooling completely.

Decorating the mini egg cookie layer cake

Beat the butter using a stand mixer or electric hand beaters for 5 minutes. Add the icing sugar and vanilla and beat until smooth for another 4 minutes. Remember to go slowly at first so you don’t stir up an icing sugar cloud.

If the buttercream is still a little thick, add a tablespoon on milk to thin it.

Spread a layer of buttercream on top of one of the cookie layers. You can pipe the buttercream on if you like. Put the other cookie cake layer on top and pipe (using a piping bag and large star tip) buttercream around the top edge of the cake. Press the remaining mini eggs into the buttercream stars at regular intervals around the top of the mini egg cookie layer cake to finish.

As this is cookie, rather than cake, it cake be a little tricky to slice cleanly. Go slowly and gently so it doesn’t crumble.

The cookie layer cake will keep well for up to a week in an airtight container in a cool, dry place. As it was quite tall, I had to take the layers apart and store them in two tubs.

A slice of this goes very nicely with a cup of tea!

Looking for some other Easter-themed recipes? Try these!