A delicious chocolate traybake cake, decorated with chocolate buttercream, Cadbury’s Creme Eggs and Cadbury’s Mini Eggs! This Easter Chocolate Traybake Cake is quick and simple to make, and requires no special equipment. Perfect for any Easter-themed event, it makes a great dessert on Easter day itself, and it’s a brilliant recipe to make with kids in the runup to Easter too. (Alternatively you can make this cake after Easter as a way to use up all your leftover Easter chocolate!)
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The Traybake Queen strikes again!
If you’ve been following me for a while, you’ll know I’ve often been called the Traybake Queen! I am known for my savoury traybakes as well as my easy peasy traybake cakes.
But there has been one glaring omission on my website – until now – a Easter Chocolate Traybake Cake.
Well, it’s finally here – and I think you’re going to LOVE it!
This Easter Chocolate Traybake Cake is quick and simple to make, and requires no special skills or equipment – meaning absolutely anyone can make this cake. (It’s practically foolproof!)
It’s perfect for any Easter-themed event – like an Easter party or an Easter bake sale. It’s a brilliant recipe to make with kids in the run-up to Easter. And, of course, it makes a great dessert on Easter day itself.
(Alternatively you can make this cake after Easter as a way to use up all your leftover Easter chocolate.)
How to make Easter Chocolate Traybake Cake
This Easter Chocolate Traybake Cake really is so easy to make.
First you need to make a simple chocolate sponge cake by beating together butter and sugar, then mixing in eggs, cocoa powder and flour. Tip the mixture into a traybake pan and bake for 30 minutes. Allow the cake to fully cool, then decorate.
The decoration on this Chocolate Easter Traybake is super easy too easy! All you need to do is mix butter, icing sugar and cocoa powder to make a simple chocolate buttercream. Then spread the buttercream the cake and top with Cadbury’s Creme Eggs and Mini Eggs… or whatever you fancy!
(Full recipe given in the recipe card below.)
No special equipment required
The great thing about this simple Easter traybake cake, is you don’t need any special equipment. All you need is a bowl, a spoon, a traybake pan and a knife!
(If you don’t already have a traybake pan, I highly recommend THIS ONE, as it can be turned into an airtight storage tin for the cake, once the cake is baked and decorated.)
A great Easter cake to make with kids!
Because it is so easy, this is a great recipe to make with children! It would be a great way to keep your kids occupied for some time over the Easter holidays… and they will almost certainly have a lot of fun decorating it with all their favourite Easter decorations 😀
Can you use different decorations?
Yes – absolutely! You can use any kind of Easter chocolate on this Easter Chocolate Traybake Cake.
I have used:
But you other good decoration options include:
- Cadbury’s Caramel Eggs
- Malteser Chocolate Easter Mini Bunnies
- Smarties Mini Eggs
- Milky Bar Mini Eggs
- Terry’s Chocolate Orange Mini Eggs
- Lindt Chocolate Mini Bunnies
You can just use one kind of Easter chocolate, or mix several… You could even add some cute fluffy chicks if you want to go full-on Easter!
And, of course, this cake is a great way to use up any leftover Easter chocolate after Easter. (If such a thing exists in your house!?!)
Want more easy Easter bakes?
I have lots of easy-but-delicious Easter recipes! Here are some others you may like…
- Easy Chocolate Easter Cake (2 tier round cake)
- Easy Chocolate Easter Cupcakes
- Easter Chocolate Cornflake Nests (only 3 ingredients!)
- Easy Creme Egg Brownies
- Mini Egg Rocky Road
- Mini Egg Cheesecake (No Bake)
Mini Egg Cheesecake
How to line a traybake pan – the easy peasy way!
It’s important to line the traybake pan for this Easter traybake. But don’t worry – lining a traybake pan is not difficult at all with my easy peasy method!
Simply cut a piece of baking paper the width of your cake pan and quite a lot longer than the length. Then cut a piece of baking paper the length of your cake pan and quite a lot longer than the width.
Next, grease the base and sides of your cake pan with olive oil. Then place one of your pre-cut pieces of baking paper across the base of your pan and up two of the sides (you should cut it long enough so it covers the base and two sides and sticks up above the sides a bit).
Grease the base of your pan again (it help the paper stick), then place the other piece of baking paper the opposite way so that it covers the base and the other two sides and sticks up above sides a bit too.
Finally grease the base and sides again, just for good measure (in theory, cake shouldn’t stick to baking paper – in practice, an extra layer of oil really does help the cake come off the paper better!)
Not only is the cake pan now beautifully lined (without any complicated maths or measuring!), but the overhanging baking paper will serve as sort of ‘handles’ to help you lift the cake out of the tin and onto the cooling rack – so no more tipping the cake up-side down and back again!
How to store Easter Chocolate Traybake Cake
To keep it fresh, store this Easter Chocolate Traybake Cake in an airtight cake tin. I highly recommend THIS TIN, which you can use both to cook the traybake in and to store it in afterwards.
(The best thing about this tin is you can keep the traybake flat, meaning all that hard work you did on decorating it won’t get messed up when you store it or if you have to transport it somewhere else!)
How long will Easter Chocolate Traybake Cake keep?
This cake will keep for up to a week, if kept in an airtight container. (Though it will taste at its best in the first 2-3 days.)
Can you freeze Easter Chocolate Traybake Cake?
Surprisingly, cake freezes really well! However, you should freeze the cake BEFORE decorating it. Once completely cold, wrap the cake first in a double layer of baking paper and then in a double layer of foil. Properly wrapped, the cake should keep in the freezer for up to 3 months.
If you like this recipe…
…you might also like:
- Easy Creme Egg Chocolate Tart
- Easy Mini Egg Brownies
- Easy Simnel Cake Traybake
- Mini Simnel Cakes
- Super Simple Carrot Cake
- Easy Carrot Cake Traybake
- Coconut Pineapple Carrot Cake
Easy Carrot Cake Traybake
Easter Chocolate Traybake Cake
Equipment
- 1 Wooden spoon
- 1 regular table knife (or a palette knife, if you have one)
- 1 cooling rack (optional - use your grill rack if you don't have one!)
- 1 skewer (optional - use the handle of a teaspoon if you don't have one!)
- Baking paper
Ingredients
Cake
- 350 g butter (or margarine), softened (see Note 1)
- 350 g caster sugar
- 6 large eggs
- 350 g self-raising flour
- 75 g cocoa powder
- 4 tablespoons milk
Buttercream
- 200 g butter (or margarine), softened (see Note 1)
- 400 g icing sugar (US - confectioner's sugar) sieved, (this is really important or you will end up with lumpy icing!)
- 50 g cocoa powder sieved (this is really important or you will end up with lumpy icing!)
Decoration
- Cadbury’s Mini Eggs I used 250g / 9oz
- Cadbury’s Creme Eggs I used 5 large ones and 7 mini ones
- Or any other decoration you like!
Instructions
Making the cake
- Pre heat your oven to 180C / 160C fan / gas mark 4 / 350F. Grease and fully line a traybake pan (33 by 23cm / 13 by 9ins).
- Beat the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy looking. (See Note 2.)
- Add one egg and beat until combined. Repeat with the other eggs, adding them in one at a time.
- Add in half the flour and fold it in gently.
- Stir in the cocoa powder.
- Add in the remaining flour and fold in gently.
- Stir in the milk to loosen the cake batter slightly.
- Tip the mixture into the lined traybake pan. Smooth over the surface with the back of your wooden spoon.
- Put the cake tin in the oven and cook for 30-40 minutes. When it’s ready, the cake should be pulling away slightly at the sides. To be sure it’s done, push a skewer (or a teaspoon handle if you don’t have a skewer) into the centre of the cake. If it comes out clean, the cake is done. If it comes out covered in mixture, pop the cake back in the oven for a few more minutes and check again.
- When the cake is cooked, remove it from the oven. Leave in its tin for 10 minutes, or until cool enough to handle, then turn out onto a cooling rack. (Use your grill rack, if you don’t have a cooling rack.)
- Leave the cake to completely cool before decorating. (Approximately 1 hour after you have removed it from the tin.)
Decorating the cake
- Make up the buttercream by mixing the softened butter, sieved icing sugar and sieved cocoa together – you can do this by hand or with an electric beater. I always do it by hand – it’s not very much effort if you are only doing a small quantity. (PLEASE NOTE: the butter must be softened first or it will be almost impossible to mix! Add a drop or two of water if you still find it hard to mix.)
- If the cake has domed in the centre, trim it down so it is more-or-less flat. (Yes I know that means you lose a bit of cake, but… cook’s perks, right?)
- Spread the buttercream all over the flat cake top, using a knife.
- Finally, decorate the cake with mini eggs and/or creme eggs and/or whatever else you fancy!
Notes
- I much prefer the taste of a cake made with butter, but the problem with butter is that, if it has been in the fridge, it is rock solid! However, I learnt a very simple trick from the amazing Mary Berry… Fill a bowl with lukewarm water (the temperature of a very little baby’s bathwater). Chop the butter into 1cm cubes. Drop the cubes into the water and leave them for 3 minutes. After 3 minutes, tip the water out. (I use my hand to stop the little butter cubes coming out with the water.) And voila! You should now have perfectly soft butter.
- You can absolutely make this cake with an electric mixer, simply put all the cake ingredients in a large bowl and mix with an electric mixer for about 2 minutes until it looks like cake batter. However, I prefer to do things the old fashioned way (with a spoon and arm power!) and have given you my traditional method above.
- Suitable for freezing. (Undecorated cake only.)
- Nutrition information is approximate and meant as a guideline only. (Nutrition information is for the cake and buttercream only, as the nutritional information for the decorations will depend on exactly what / how much you use!)
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Disclosure
This blog post contains affiliate links, this means if you click on a link and go on to buy the product I recommend, I will get a small commission, but you will not be charged a penny more – thanks in advance!
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