Mini Chocolate Cakes with Spiced Cranberry Flavour Pearls

These Mini Chocolate Cakes with Spiced Cranberry Flavour Pearls are the ideal bring along Christmassy sweet treats.
We simply baked our favourite Chocolate cake in a slice tin (so it was thinner) and cut out rounds. Added some Lime zest and juice to a jar of Cranberry Sauce to tone the sweetness down a little and stuck two pieces of the cake together with some of the zingy Cranberry jam. A delicious still warm Chocolate Ganache spooned over each Cake to finish.

Once we got to our party we added the finishing touch, a spoonful of Spiced Cranberry Flavour Pearls and a Holly Leaf. So cute! Merry Christmas. 

What you’ll need 

• Chocolate Cake – a bought one or packet mix is absolutely ok or follow the recipe below
• 2 cups Flour (plain)
• 2 cups Sugar
• 3/4 cup Cocoa Powder
• 2 teaspoons Baking Powder
• 1 1/2 teaspoons Bi Carb Soda
• pinch Salt
• 1 teaspoon Instant Coffee 
• 1 cup Milk
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 2 Eggs
• 2 teaspoons Vanilla
• 1 cup boiling water

Filling

• Cranberry Sauce – 1 jar
• 1 x Lime, juice and zest

Topping & Garnish

• 250g Dark Chocolate (buttons or cooking Chocolate) Chopped
• 1 cup Thickened Cream 
• Spiced Cranberry Flavour Pearls
• Holly leaves – fresh if you can find some

To do

Pre heat your oven to 180c. Lets line the tin with Baking Paper next. If you don’t have a slice tray or swiss roll tin just put less in a couple of tins or just bake one and slice it into layers after it’s cooled. 

For the cake. Put all of the dry ingredients into a bowl and combine. Add in the wet ingredients next with the boiling water going in last. Mixing until smooth. I just used a good old electric hand mixer.  Pour into your tins and bake until a skewer comes out clean when inserted into the centre. 

*If you are short on time you could just buy a pre-cooked Chocolate Cake – it’s not cheating, just practical sometimes!

Next

Allow the cake to cool on a cake rack completely whilst we get the other components ready. Simply add the fine zest from the Lime into the Cranberry Sauce also adding the juice. Generally the Cranberry is very thick so this will tone down the sweetness as well as thin it down a little. 

Chop the Chocolate up and place into a microwave safe bowl. Bring the Cream almost to the boil on the stove and pour it over the Chopped Chocolate. Let it sit for a few minutes then stir until smooth. It will be super glossy.

Using a round cutter simply cut out rounds of the now cool cake. Our cutter was 5cm diameter. If need be slice the cake to level it out before so it’s nice and strainght. Stick two pieces of the cake together with some of the Cranberry mix and place them onto the cake rack over a clean tray (to catch the drips). 

Simply spoon over some of the still warm Chocolate Ganache. If it has cooled and firmed up too much just microwave in short bursts until its the right consistency. You can pop the tray into the fridge to firm up the Ganache before carefully lifting each cake onto a platter to serve.

To serve

Simply add a spoonful of Spiced Cranberry Flavour Pearls and a Holly Leaf onto each Cake and enjoy.

*I found some Holly leaves locally – I asked the question on our local Facebook page and a few people responded that have trees in their front garden and were happy to share 🙂

Until next time

From the Peninsula Larder Team

“In the cookie of life, friends are the chocolate chips.”

— Salman Rushdie