Candles omitted - I'll leave you to guess the age...
Well, that's a bit of a lengthy title for some very diminutive cakes. It was J's birthday recently and for various reasons I wanted to make small cakes rather than a giant centrepiece. I decided to use my straight-sided 12-hole mini cake tin from Lakeland (sadly this is not sponsored by them, I paid for it myself, hence the desire to get plenty of use out of it!) and use a soured cream enriched cake mixture to provide a richer cake, suitable for a birthday.
I was also experimenting with some freeze dried raspberries I bought recently. My theory was that if I squashed them into powder they might provide enough colour to tint some of the sponge pink. It was quite a reasonable theory, but I probably didn't use enough of the raspberries, and didn't pulverise them enough and the sponge remained resolutely un-pink. Next time I want a coloured sponge I guess I'll just have to resort to food colouring.
The filling was a white chocolate buttercream (another slight experiment for me) and blackcurrant jam. Raspberry would have been more complimentary, but blackcurrant was available.
Soured cream, raspberry and blackcurrant mini cakes with white chocolate buttercream frosting
Ingredients
65g butter
65g caster sugar
65g self raising flour
1 egg
1/8 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
25g soured cream
freeze dried raspberries (optional - I didn't measure these and probably used about 1/2-1tsp)
Ingredients for white chocolate buttercream - see below
Blackcurrant (or raspberry) jam
Method
- Preheat the oven to gas 4/180C. Grease five of the mini tin holes. These would work in regular muffin tins too, just make sure they're well greased, and realise you'll get sloping sides.
- Beat together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.
- Add the egg, flour, baking powder, vanilla and soured cream. Beat until well combined.
- Spoon half the mix into two of the holes.
- Add the raspberries (pulverised or not) if using to the remaining mixture and divide between the other two holes. The fifth prepared hole is for if you've got a little more batter than you think will fit into the other holes. I did have and ended up making a half-height mini-mini cake too.
- Bake for around 30-35 minutes until risen and golden and a cake tester comes out clean.
- Remove from the tin and allow to cool on a wire rack.
White chocolate buttercream
This amount is too much for these cakes, but since I was just playing to see how it turned out I wasn't worried about how much I was making.
50g unsalted butter, softened
70g icing sugar
30g white chocolate, melted and cooled
- Beat the butter until light and fluffy. Add the sugar and continue to beat. Add the chocolate and beat to combine.
To assemble
- Cut each cake into three. Spread a little buttercream onto each of the two lower layers then dollop on a little jam and spread out.
- Reassemble layers.
- Dust with icing sugar. Although if you wanted to, you could use more of the buttercream to add to the top of the cakes.
These were very much appreciated and I had the mini one for myself. The cake was rich and smooth and not very strongly raspberry flavoured. The white chocolate buttercream is definitely something I'll be doing again. It wasn't as sweet as the usual buttercream I make and was very smooth and rich without particularly tasting of white chocolate. I used Green and Black's white chocolate, so it's interesting that even a relatively strong tasting variety didn't seem to come through.
Very successful - Happy Birthday J xxx
8 comments:
Oooh, I do love the raspberry and white chocolate combination. I'm going to have to try your buttercream method of adding white chocolate to it as I thought it'd be mega sweet too but it's reassuring to hear that it's not!
Those look so pretty and so tempting C. Having three layers does make them look extra special and a perfect birthday cake I reckon. I think white chocolate works well in buttercream and as you've probably noticed, I use it rather a lot.
I am sure the lucky birthday J was very excited. they do sound delish. The freeze dried raspberries do require a reasonable ( lot) amount to colour and significantly flavour
These cakes look really cute, and the flavour combination sounds good too.
I've also bought some of those freeze dried raspberries - it was a toss-up between those and the mangoes - now I am forewarned to use a bigger quantity. Thanks!
Great sounding cake and I LOVE the mini cake tin! What a clever idea.
These sound lovely and look perfect for heading into spring! I'm a big fan of using white chocolate in buttercream, as you sa it's a little less sweet than regular buttercream and I find it always makes a really nice spreading consistency.
Ohh yum! The title alone sounds divine but I even saw the little cakes. Perfect for afternoon tea. I bet the freeze dried berries would be great in biscotti where you need dry things, normally berries are too wet to use.
Where did you find yours?
So pretty Caroline! J is very lucky! I keep trying to make things with raspberries, but they never quite work out as I anticipate..
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