No-bake Easter bunnies
Makes 18
Ingredients
285g pack Madeira cake
100g cream cheese
½ tsp vanilla paste or extract
100g strawberries, hulled
250g good quality white chocolate, broken into pieces
6 tbsp desiccated coconut or grated white chocolate
18 pink mini marshmallows
100g white, ready-to-roll icing
18 mini red sugar-coated sweets (mini Smarties)
36 mini blue edible sugar balls
Method
■ Thinly trim the dark brown edges from the Madeira cake, then make into crumbs by cutting into pieces and blitzing in a food processor or liquidiser, or by crumbling into tiny pieces with your fingertips.
■ Beat the cream cheese and vanilla in a bowl until smooth. Finely chop the strawberries and add to the cream cheese with the cake crumbs. Mix together.
■ Divide the cake mixture into 18 even-sized mounds and roll into balls. Put them on a baking sheet and place in the freezer for 15 minutes.
■ Break the chocolate into pieces and melt by placing in a bowl set over a saucepan of gently simmering water for about five minutes, making sure that the water doesn’t touch the base of the bowl. Stir the chocolate until smooth and take the bowl off the heat.
■ Line a baking sheet with non-stick baking paper.
■ Spear a cake ball on a fork and either swirl in the melted chocolate to coat or spoon a little melted chocolate over it as it is held over the bowl, allowing the excess chocolate to drip off. Transfer the coated cake ball to the baking sheet and sprinkle half of it with a little coconut or grated chocolate “fur”.
■ Continue coating the remaining cake balls in chocolate and sprinkling with coconut or grated chocolate until they are all done.
■ To make the ears, cut the mini marshmallows in half and break off tiny pieces of white icing. With fingertips dusted with icing sugar, roll into balls and press into ovals a little larger than the marshmallows.
■ Press the icing around a marshmallow and pinch the top into an ear shape. Press two on to each cake ball. Add sweets to make the eyes and noses. Chill in the fridge for one hour until set, then arrange in paper cake cases.
■ Eat within two days of making.