MANILA, Philippines — Imagine a chocolate brownie with marshmallow topping that is all dressed in chocolate to look like a beehive and then studded with little chocolate bees? This is surely an awesome treat for World Chocolate Day 2025.
It is a great idea for a birthday party giveaway, too! To demonstrate how cute the small cake can be, Chef Jackie Ang Po recently made a Chocolate Beehive Cake and shared how to bake the cake base into a beehive with little bees on it.
Beehive Cake
Ingredients:
For the cake base:
3/4 cup cocoa powder
3/4 tsp. Nescafe Classic
1/2 cup hot water
1/2 cup Nestle All Purpose Cream
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. fine salt
3/4 cup butter, softened
3/4 cup sugar
2 eggs
Procedure:
1. Combine cocoa powder, Nescafe Classic and hot water, and stir until completely melted. Add all-purpose cream. This is your wet ingredient mixture.
2. In another bowl, sift together all-purpose flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. This is your dry ingredient mixture.
3. In a mixer bowl, cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time. Then add one-third of your dry ingredients, followed by half of your wet ingredients, another one-third of your dry ingredients, and the remaining half of the wet ingredients, and the remaining one-third of the dry ingredients last.
4. Pour into an 8x8-inch pan lined with parchment paper.
5. Bake in a preheated 350°F oven for 20 to 30 minutes or until toothpick inserted onto the center comes out clean. If cake has elevation, slice off to even up surface of the cake. Use excess to make another dessert. Slice cake base into 9 even squares.
For the marshmallow icing:
4 egg whites, at room temperature
1 cup sugar
1/8 tsp. salt
Procedure:
1. In a bowl, mix together egg whites, sugar and salt.
2. Simmer water in a pan. Once simmering, put bowl of egg mixture on top and, double boiler style, melt the sugar and salt. Pasteurize the egg whites by mixing by hand until sugar grains are gone and the bowl is a little hot.
3. Transfer to a mixer and beat until bowl is cold and stiff peaks form.
4. Scoop into a piping bag fitted with a round 1/2-inch tip or a little bigger.
For the royal icing bees:
2 cups powdered sugar
3 tbsps. egg whites
1/2 tsp. salt
Paste colors
Procedure:
1. In a bowl, combine powdered sugar, egg whites, and salt. Beat until nice and stiff.
2. Divide royal icing into three bowls. For the bees’ yellow body, add yellow gel color and mix well. For the bees’ body stripes and head, add black powder food coloring and mix well. It has to be powder so it doesn’t bleed into the yellow color once done. Let the third portion remain white.
3. Make three paper cones for piping bags using parchment paper. Fill each with a different colored royal icing. Cut only a very small tip from the black icing, medium for the white icing, and slightly bigger for the yellow icing.
4. Now make your bees. On parchment paper, pipe oval bodies with yellow icing. Pipe heads and body stripes with black icing. Pipe wings on both sides of the body and small eyes on head with white. Allow to set overnight before using.
To assemble:
Melted chocolate
Procedure:
1. On top of each chocolate cake square, pipe three full rounds of marshmallow icing, narrowing the diameter as you go up.
2. Transfer to a wire mesh tray placed over a tray and pour slightly cooled melted chocolate to coat the marshmallow hive and cake.
3. Before chocolate sets completely, stick royal icing bees all over.
4. Cool completely.