Sunday bakes - 'They don't make egg-shaped moulds' easter cake

For Easter sunday I wanted to make a 'show stopper' and what better shape for Easter than an egg. But unfortunately they don't seem sell egg shaped cake moulds, so I had  improvise with a pudding dish. 
Whilst this cake lasted long enough to eat, the bottom half was starting to look a little bulbous, I think there is a good reason why there aren't egg-shaped cakes. 
So make this cake if you are planning on eating is quickly (in the next few days).

Ingredients
Cake mix - make 2 batches, each with the following:
120g/4.5oz Self-raising flour
140g/5oz Caster sugar
pinch of salt
40g/1.5oz stork/butter
120ml milk
1 egg
1/4 tsp flavouring
Marzipan
Fondant icing
Icing lace powder
Black cherry jam

Method
For each of the cake halves beat the sugar and butter togegther until light and fluffy, then add the egg and beat again. Sift in the flour and mix gently at first, then gradually add the milk, salt, and the flavouring, beat togegther to make a light sponge batter. For the top layer I added vanilla flavour but for the bottom I added almond, to go with the cherry jam and marzipan.

Pour one batch of cake mix into a pudding dish, lined with buttered tin foil and cover with some more tin foil with a pleat in. Put into a roasting tin half filled with water and bake on a low heat until it is cooked all the way through (use the skewer test to check). Take the tin foil off the top for the last 10 minutes of cooking to crisp up the top, it will help keep the structure of the cake strong. Do this for both halves of the cake.

Once the cake has cooled tip them out onto a plate, put one small side down on the plate, cover with jam and then invert the other side and place on top. The pudding dish will have had a flat bottom so this should balance.

Cover the now egg-shaped cake in jam, then a thin layer of marzipan before putting on the fondant icing. I've found that rolling out the marzipan and fondant onto cling film will make transferring the rolled out icing onto the cake much easier and the surface much smoother. You can also rub down the surface to smooth out any folds without getting too sticky. 

I have a collection of the powdered icing paints, but you can mix them with water to make icing paints. I mixed up three colours and painted them over the surface to make a bright watercolour effect. 

You can buy the silicone mould for the icing lace online as well as the special icing sugar. you mix up the powder with water and spread over the mould, taking care to scrape off as much excess as possible. 

It will dry out overnight or over a few hours but you can speed up the process by placing in a very cool oven. Don't leave in the oven for too long because it will become brittle. 

Peel out of the mould and lay over the cake. I ran pieces of wire down one of the pieces and folded up to make a bow to sit on top. 

Happy Easter bakers!