Juliet Sear's Easy Easter tray bake
Juliet's creating an easy spring tray bake that's bursting with colour, decorated with mini eggs, icing flowers and plenty of sprinkles!
Juliet Sear's Easter funfetti traybake
Makes 24 squares
Ingredients
300g softened unsalted butter
300g white caster sugar
2 tsp vanilla bean paste or extract
6 medium free range eggs
300g self raising flour
½ tsp salt
½ tsp baking powder
100ml milk
3 tablespoons bright cake sprinkles
For the buttercream icing
500g soft unsalted butter
2 tsp vanilla extract
1kg icing sugar
Food colouring pastes of your choice
Method
1. Preheat the oven to 170 fan/ gas 5
2. Grease and line a deep 20 x 30cm cake tin
3. For the sponge cake, whip together the butter, the sugar and vanilla in an electric mixer on a high speed for a few minutes until very pale, really creamy and fluffy.
4. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, incorporating together really well
5. In a separate bowl, dry whisk or sieve the flour, salt and baking powder together. Add to the wet mix in increments of three, just incorporating each time, and then loosen with the milk and stir in the sprinkles.
6. Pour the mixture into the lined tin and level off with a spatula and bake for about 25-30 mins or until cooked through, risen and spongy.
7. When baked, leave in the tin for 5 minutes and then turn out onto a wire rack to cool completely. When cool, if the sponge has risen in uneven parts, trim the cake to flatten it.
8. For the topping, whip together the butter, vanilla and sugar in an electric mixer until really pale, creamy and fluffy.
9. Separate into bowls and make a mixture of colours with the different colouring pastes. You can even make two shades of one colour. Then load the mixtures into a piping bag with a nozzle (adding more white butter cream if making a lighter shade).
10. To decorate, start at one corner of the cake and begin piping in stars, swirls, dots and wiggles to fill up the whole top in a mixture of colours and styles. If you’re doing it as an Easter theme, you could use more of a mini egg colour palette, and use extra eggs and Easter chicks over the top.