Mars Bar Easter Crispy Cakes

Easter weekend is here and yet another Primrose Bakery recipe has come into play. I think it is going to get to the point where I have made every recipe from their Cupcakes book which I have never come even close to with any other cookbook. But then it is excellent so I think I am fully justified.

Easter is the one time I would say it is always acceptable to make crispy cakes no matter what age you are. I had seen this recipe for delicious Mars Bar Crispy Cakes in my Primrose Bakery book and had wanted to make them for some time and this seemed like the perfect opportunity.

Although they are merely humble crispy cakes, some pretty faaancy ingredients went into these bad boys, seeing as all the ingredients were purchased from Waitrose and I made the decision to use up the lovely German almond chocolate my March Foodie Penpal Nicky sent me in the icing.

Aída had left us a Mars Bar Easter egg as well as some Mini Eggs in Hotel Morris so I thought it would be perfect to decorate our cakes with these yummy delights.

These crispy cakes were really easy to make as you would expect, the only slightly taxing part was hand-mixing the chocolate icing. They really were some of the simplest cakes I've made in ages and I would wholeheartedly recommend giving them a try - even children could manage them I think.

We gave a box of these cakes to Craig and Francesca yesterday for their Easter present and I really hope they're nice and that they enjoy them. We're waiting for the Doyles to arrive today before we tuck in to the remaining cakes. Happy Easter everyone!

Recipe:
150g cornflakes
50g butter
2 tbsp golden syrup
4 Mars Bars

For the icing
100g dark chocolate
110g butter
1 tbsp milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
125g icing sugar

To decorate
1 bag of Mini Eggs
1 Mars Bar Easter egg

Line a muffin tin with muffin cases. Measure out the cornflakes and place in a large mixing bowl with plenty of room for stirring.

Melt the butter in a saucepan. Meanwhile, chop up the Mars Bars into chunks of about 1 centimetre.

Add the Mars Bar chunks to the saucepan and stir until all the pieces of Mars are melted into the butter and a thick sauce is formed.

Add the sauce to the cornflakes, stirring the whole time. Do this quickly so that the Mars Bar sauce doesn't go hard and you can ensure everything is properly combined.

Take tablespoonfuls of the crispy cake mixture and press into the muffin cases.

While the cakes cool and set, make the icing. Start by creaming the butter and sugar together as best you can. When this becomes difficult, add the milk and vanilla extract to make the mixture more wet and workable. Try to get rid of all the butter lumps.

Melt the chocolate down in the microwave before adding this to the icing and stirring well. While the icing is still quite warm, use a palette knife to put little blobs of icing onto each crispy cake and spread around a little.

Break up the Mars Bar egg into large chunks. Decorate each cake with Mini Eggs and chunks of Mars Bar egg.

Leave the icing to set a little before serving.