Easter Spring Flowers Traybake

There’s nothing like springtime flowers – especially when they’re delicious in cake form. If you’re looking for an Easter cake with a difference, you can’t go wrong with this flower-topped traybake. With our simple and easy-to-follow recipe and icing guide, you’ll be creating your own floral masterpiece in no time.

Here’s how we made ours.

Ingredients

For the sponge

200g butter, at room temperature
200g caster sugar
3 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
225g self-raising flour
Generous pinch of salt
3 tbsp milk

For the vanilla buttercream

We used roughly 900g of buttercream to decorate our sponge. We’d recommend making it in smaller batches to avoid waste.
300g butter, at room temperature
600g icing sugar
1½ tsp vanilla extract

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 180°C/ fan 160°C/ Gas 4. Line the base and sides of a Lakeland Traybake Brownie Tin with baking parchment.
Beat the butter for a few seconds in a large mixing bowl to soften it, then add the caster sugar. Beat well until light and fluffy, using a hand-held electric mixer or wooden spoon. Beat in the eggs one at a time, beating well between each addition. Stir in the vanilla extract.
Sift the flour and salt into the bowl, then fold it in gently using a large metal spoon. Do not beat the mixture at this stage – you must handle it carefully! Add the milk and stir it through gently.
Tip the mixture into the prepared tin and level the surface with a palette knife or the back of a spoon. Bake in the centre of the oven for 35-38 minutes, until risen and springy when touched lightly. Cool in the tin for 10 minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack and remove the lining parchment. Leave to cool completely.

To decorate

To make the buttercream, beat the butter in a large mixing bowl until creamy, then gradually beat in the icing sugar until light and fluffy. Stir in the vanilla extract, then separate into different bowls ready to add your food colourings. We used 200g of uncoloured buttercream to top our traybake and act as a base for the floral decorations; 200g of pink, 200g of blue and 200g of yellow for the flowers; and 100g of green for the leaves. Alternatively, use plain icing for quick and easy results. You can of course choose your own food colourings to add.
Spread a layer of vanilla buttercream over the top of your cooled sponge and allow to set. You now have your canvas for your floral masterpiece.
We piped the yellow flowers using a 2D flower nozzle. For the smaller yellow flowers, hold your piping bag vertically above the cake, squeeze and release. For the yellow roses, using the same nozzle, start where you’d like the centre of your rose to be, squeeze and swirl outwards until you have the desired effect.
Follow the same technique for the pink flowers, only with a standard-sized closed star nozzle.
For the blue swirls, we used a fine-toothed open star nozzle, simply squeezing and lifting, giving a slight swirling action to some.
Dot all of the flowers and swirls wherever you fancy and add a couple of leaves around some of the flowers using green buttercream in a piping bag with a leaf nozzle. At this stage, if you have any gaps, fill them in with a small flower or leaves, until the entire surface of your cake is covered.
For a final flourish, we added sprinkles as well as 100s and 1000s