Monday 27 January 2014

Valentine Chocolate Cake Bites

   These cute little Valentine's Day Cake bites are so easy. I love it when it's easy. And once again, kids could do them easily. All you need to do is make a cake, cut it into squares and drizzle chocolate over them and add some festive sprinkles. Nice and easy! I made mine using half of my birthday cake mixture. It was a late birthday cake, though, and it was nothing special. It was more for the sake of eating cake than making anything special but I might make something properly at some random point in the next few months as a belated birthday cake.
   I cut a round cake into squares and froze them so they'd keep. Then a few days later when I had the ingredients, I melted white chocolate over the top of them and, after painstakingly going through a tub of sprinkles and separating all the white, pink and purple sprinkles from the rest, I put them on top.




You Will Need:
100g softened butter
100g granulated sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract or other flavouring
100g plain flour
2 teaspoons of baking powder
50g cocoa powder
Oil
Chocolate or chocolate melts (I used about 100g of Milky Bar Buttons)
Sprinkles


1) Preheat the oven to gas mark 4/180 C/350 F and, in a large bowl, cream the butter and sugar together.

2) Mix in the eggs and the flavouring.

3) Mix in the flour, baking powder and cocoa powder and combine completely until smooth. If the mixture seems too dry, add a little bit of oil and mix together.
Optional: you could also add chocolate chunks into the mix for a little more chocolate.

4) Grease a cake tin and empty the contents into it before putting it into the oven. Cook for 20 minutes or until a knife comes out clean.

5) Let it cool completely then turn the cake out and cut it into squares. Instead of eating the scraps myself I left them on a plate and put them where my dad and boyfriend would find them easily; the plate was clean in an hour. I froze my squares so they'd keep until I had the chocolate, but that also made them firmer and less likely to sink or fall under the weight of the chocolate.

6) When you're ready to melt the chocolate, if it isn't chocolate melts I recommend microwaving it. I managed to burn my white chocolate very quickly with a double boiler, so the second time around I put them in a pyrex jug and put them in the microwave, first for 40 seconds, then again for 60. Then I put the jug in the saucepan I had used to double boil and used the hot water to keep the chocolate in a melted state without burning it. I used a spoon to pour it over the top of the cakes. I wanted to completely cover them but since I'd burned the first half of the chocolate (I was so glad that, for once, I didn't use the whole bag in one go) I could only cover the top. I added extra so that it would run down the side a little. I then dropped sprinkles over the top and let them set.


   I love it when cake has a hard shell, it makes for a lovely contrast, but only if it's not too much. I hate it when it has just a thin shell of chocolate, that's not enough of a contrast, but you obviously don't want too much on top either. You could add mini marshmallows (or large marshmallows cut up) on top and then add more chocolate over the top of them.




1 comment:

I do read every single comment, and I will try to respond where I can. If you have an important question about my blog or my shop, however, then you might be better off contacting me directly by email. Thanks so much for reading my blog!