Strawberry Milkshake Easter Cake

Having guests over Easter is always a good excuse for baking and I find cakes easier than desserts to make in advance. So I made this after work in the evening and decorated it first thing in the morning, in  time for my sister and niece to arrive.

The cake is a strawberry milkshake cake, so called because of the secret ingredient - Nesquik! (For those not familiar with this childhood staple, Nesquik is a powdered flavouring to add to milk, which comes in strawberry or banana flavour. It has been around since I was a child in the 80s, if not even longer!).

I recently made an Oreo cake for my husband’s birthday which I haven’t blogged about yet - it was the most delicious moist chocolate cake, and I decided to create a cake along similar lines. That cake used cocoa powder - and boiling water, to which I attribute the moistness - so for this one, as I wanted a fruity spring flavour but with an ingredient of a similar texture to cocoa powder and suddenly remembered Nesquik!

 This is the recipe I adapted, using Nesquik in place of cocoa powder, though I only used the recipe for the sponge and not the buttercream or chocolate ganache.

For the buttercream I made a standard butter and icing sugar combination, adding in some strawberry syrup for flavour and colour. I filled the three layer cake and then piped some swirls on the top, before colouring some more buttercream purple and green, to pipe more flowers and little bits of green (foliage, I guess) in between. 

I then decorated the top with Easter marshmallows (you could also use mini eggs if young children aren’t going to eat it) and a little pink glimmer sugar. The ‘hoppy Easter’ cake topper is a plastic sign that my husband printed for me with his new 3D printer, which I love!