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Surprise Spring Cookies and Cream Cake
This beautiful Cookies and Cream Cake has a secret spring surprise inside! Made with rich chocolate cake and vanilla buttercream, crushed Oreos add the beautiful effect to this spring speckled egg cake.
Course: Dessert
Servings: 1 4 layer 6"-round Cake
Author: Cristina
Ingredients
The recipe below will make four 6-inch round layers, double the recipe for four layers of 8-inch rounds or higher.
Cocoa Fudge Cake
  • 1⅔ cups all-purpose flour or 2 cups cake flour
  • cups white sugar
  • cups cocoa
  • ½ cups vegetable oil
  • cups buttermilk (OR 2 Tbsp vinegar in 1½ cups milk)
  • tsp baking soda
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 1 tsp vanilla
  • 2 eggs
Vanilla Buttercream
  • 1 cup butter
  • 3-4 cups sifted powdered sugar
  • 1 tbsp vanilla extract
  • 3-4 Tbsp milk or heavy cream (I always use cream with this recipe!)
  • 5-6 Oreo cookies
  • Sky blue food colouring + leaf green food colouring
Filling & Topping
  • ~ 1 cup chocolate eggs
  • Anything else you want to decorate the top! I used 3 Cadbury Cream Eggs.
Instructions
Chocolate Cake
  1. Preheat oven to 350°, and cut out four 6-inch rounds of parchment paper to line the bottom of your pans.
  2. Mix all of the cake ingredients together in the order they're listed on medium first, scraping the sides occasionally. Then turn it up to high and let it go for 3 minutes, again, scraping the sides occasionally.
  3. Divide the batter into 4 equal parts, and pour them into your pans. Pop those in the oven for 25-30 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the centre comes out clean.
  4. Let cool 10 minutes, then remove from the pans onto a cooling rack.
  5. Set aside. Do not assemble or frost the cake until the cake is completely cool.
Oreo Vanilla Buttercream
  1. Put your Oreos in the freezer for at least 15 minutes. This will make it easier to smash later!
  2. Mix all ingredients together in a mixing bowl, scraping the sides occasionally, then turn up the speed to high, and beat for a minute. The frosting should be light and fluffy. It needs to be very easy to spread, so add a little more cream if it's too stiff.
  3. Add your food colouring in a bit at a time. You will need mostly sky blue, and a tiny bit of leaf green. I eyeballed it, and it ended up being about 1/4 tsp of blue to the end of a toothpick dipped in green.
  4. Smash your Oreos into crumbs. You can do this in the food processor or put the cookies in a ziploc bag and smash them with a rolling pin.
  5. Mix them into the buttercream.
Assembly
  1. Level your cakes. There are many tutorials online (see my link above), but you want to make sure they are FLAT.
  2. Take two of the layers, and cut a whole in the centre of them. I use a bowl as a template. You want to make sure there is a wide enough border that they will be strong enough to support the top layer, at least an inch and a half thick.
  3. Using a spatula, frost the top of one of the hollow layers. Place it upside down on the bottom layer of the cake. Frost the top of that one, and add the other hollow layer on top. It should look like a well (see the pictorial above!). Add the chocolate eggs into the centre. Frost the top again, and add the final layer on top.
  4. Frost the outside of your cake with a very thin layer of buttercream to lock all those crumbs in!
  5. Pop it in the fridge or freezer for about 30 minutes to harden the crumb coat seal it. We don't want any crumbs on our final product!
  6. Bring it out of the fridge or freezer and frost the rest with a nice thick layer of buttercream.
  7. Decorate as you would like!