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GBBO Star Lizzie Acker shares her recipe for a delicious Easter Bundty cake, crafted with a special secret Ingredient
Forget traditional Easter treats like simnel cakes or hot cross buns; why not try making an eye-catching and delicious Easter Bundty cake that’s been specially created by celebrity chef and Great British Bake Off (GBBO) star Lizzie Acker, featuring the Easter Bunny jumping into a rabbit hole. It is enriched with a secret ingredient that makes all the difference to the taste: Nielsen-Massey® Vanilla .
The idea for this cake comes from Lizzie’s vision of how the Easter rabbit feels after finishing his day’s work delivering chocolate: “He’s climbing back through the hole thinking, “this is crazy, my job is done”, and no one is getting eggs next year as it’s too much hard work!”
Easter provides the perfect opportunity to reunite family and friends and eliminate the winter blues as we prepare for Spring. To mark the occasion, Lizzie has teamed up with Nielsen-Massey to create this delicious and truly original cake that has the perfect blends of vanilla, almonds and lemon flavours that is guaranteed to impress your guests, and it’s also gluten-free.
Lizzie says this recipe is a tasty retreat from the heavy flavours of Easter chocolates and sweets, noting “The Nielsen-Massey Gourmet Vanilla Extract makes the meringue rabbit lovely and sweet and balances the citrus notes.”
Whether you are making the cake for your kids or unleashing your inner child as Lizzie does, this cake benefits from being paired with Nielsen-Massey’s true-to-bean Gourmet Vanilla Extract, made in the US since 1907, for a unique recipe.
Nielsen-Massey hand-picks and hand-cures the vanilla beans, and a week-long cold extraction process preserves more than 300 complex flavour notes from the vanilla. No other company has the same method, which guarantees both quality and distinct flavour. Nielsen-Massey products are available at Tesco and Sainsburys .
How to make Lizzie Acker’s Easter Bundty Cake:
Serves 16
Cooking Time: 2hr 30mins
Equipment
28cm Bundt tin
2 x bowls
1 heatproof bowl
Pan
2 piping bags
Palette knife (or butter knife)
Mixing spoon
Thermometer
Fork
Ingredients
For the cake:
• 225g unsalted butter
• 350g caster sugar
• 9g Nielsen-Massey Pure Vanilla Extract
• 2 un-waxed lemons
• 5 medium eggs
• 210g almond milk
• 300g buckwheat flour (or substitute flour of choice)
• 100g ground almonds
• 10g baking powder
For the glaze:
• Green food dye
• Juice of 1 lemon
• 4g Nielsen-Massey Pure Vanilla Extract
• 200g icing sugar
• Pinch of salt
For the meringue:
• 150g egg white
• 230g caster sugar
• 2g Cream of Tartar
• Pink food dye
Method
For the cake:
1 Preheat the oven to 170°c (350°F).
2 Butter and flour dust the Bundt tin.
3 In a bowl, add the butter, caster sugar, vanilla extract, and the rind of two lemons. Mix until light in colour and soft in texture.
4 In a separate bowl, mix the almond milk and 5 eggs together.
5 Slowly add the milk and egg mixture to the butter mixture, mixing as you add.
6 Mix the dry ingredients together in a separate bowl.
7 Fold the flour mixture into the wet mixture in three parts until flour pockets are no longer visible.
8 Transfer to the baking tin and bake for 45 minutes.
9 After removing from oven, allow to cool for 1 hour before removing from tin and decorating.
10 To remove from the cake from the tin, cover the bottom with a plate and flip upside down.
For the glaze:
1 Place all ingredients in a bowl and mix until there are no lumps
For the meringue:
1 Heat half a pan of water until simmering
2 Place the egg whites in a heatproof bowl on top of the simmering water
3 Heat the egg whites until the temperature reaches 60°c (140°F)
4 Take off the heat and start mixing. When frothy, add Cream of Tartar
5 Every 30 seconds, add the sugar in tablespoons until it is all used
For the assembly:
1 Once the cake has cooled, smooth on the glaze.
2 At this point, it should look like a rabbit hole.
3 Now you are going to make your rabbit. If you’re worried that the Bundt hole is too big, you can use a ramekin so the meringue doesn’t disappear.
4 Heap half of the meringue into the centre to create the bunny’s body. Smooth it out with your palette knife/butterknife.
5 Now add a big ball for the tail. Using a fork, dip it in the tail and pull it out to create spikes to make the tail look fluffy
6 Pipe on two long feet
7 Then colour the last of your meringue with the pink food dye
8 Add three toes to the feet
About Nielsen-Massey Gourmet Vanilla Extract
Nielsen-Massey’s Gourmet Vanilla Extract comes in distinctive 60ml and 118 ml brown bottles, available from Sainsbury’s, Tesco, Waitrose or Lakeland.
The company also produces vanilla pastes and powders, whole vanilla pods and a range of other flavourings, including orange blossom water and rose water. For more recipe inspiration visit: hnielsenmassey.com/landing/featured-recipes/
