Chocolate Blueberry and Lemon Mini Cakes

When Hend reached out to me about working together I was incredibly excited! She is an amazing homewares designer and her tableware is beyond beautiful. Timeless and sophisticated, her luxury products are available in a range of complementary tones.

You may recognise these chocolate blueberry and lemon mini cakes as they are one of my most popular recipes and super easy to bake at home! But myself and Hend agreed they needed a little spring update to brighten these grey January days and her matte green side plates would be a wonderful complement to them.

I adore using natural decoration on my bakes, whether that’s in the form of fruit or flowers, or both! These little winter flowering violas were the perfect choice, marrying together the lemon and blueberry flavours and colours.

For this chocolate blueberry and lemon mini cakes recipe you’ll need a 12 holed mini cake tin. I used this Lakeland one from Amazon. And the little Flower & White Chocolate Meringue Drops can be found here.

This recipe was made in collaboration with Hend Krichen, who kindly gifted me the beautiful plates to use in this recipe.

INGREDIENTS

• 125 g butter

• 125 g caster sugar, plus a little extra to dust the blueberries when decorating

• 2 large eggs

• 125 g self raising flour

• 2 tbsp cocoa powder

• 2 tbsp milk

• 1 tsp baking powder

• 125 g blueberries

•  Juice of 1 lemon

• 50 g soft light brown sugar

• 200 g dark chocolate

• 100 g white chocolate

• 6 Chocolate Meringue Drops (these are from Flower and White)

• A few extra blueberries and slices of lemon to decorate

• A tablespoon of syrup (golden or maple works well) to sugar coat the extra blueberries for decorating

• 6 Viola flowers to decorate

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Grease the cake tin thoroughly with a little butter and preheat the oven to 160 degrees C fan

2. Cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy

3. Add the eggs, self raising flour and baking powder and whisk together

4. Add the cocoa powder and milk and whisk again to fully combine

5. Spoon the cake mix into the prepared cake tin, filling each hole approximately 2/3 full

6. Bake in the centre of the oven for 15-20 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean and the mix has pulled away from the sides of each hole

7. Remove from the oven and cool until the cakes can safely be removed from the tin. Place them on a wire rack and allow to cool completely

8. Once they have cooled, gently level each mini cake, removing any dome that may have occurred whilst baking. Set aside

9. Place the blueberries, lemon juice and light brown sugar into a saucepan and gently heat on a low temperature, continually stirring

10. Jam reaches the correct setting consistency at 104 degrees C so a sugar thermometer is really handy to check this. You’ll see the jam begin to reduce and thicken up after around 5-10 minutes – remove from the heat when this happens

11. Pour the jam into a cool bowl and chill for 20 minutes or until fully cooled

12. Once cool, spread a tea spoon of jam or so onto the top of 6 of the mini cakes

13. Sandwich the jam with a second layer of mini cake on the top

14. Melt the dark chocolate in the microwave in short bursts, stirring between each

15. Once melted, pour over each cake stack allowing the chocolate to drip over the sides

16. Whilst this is setting melt the white chocolate in a similar way. You can also use a glass bowl over a pan of boiling water if you prefer

17. Once melted drizzle in lines across the top of each cake

18. To create the little sugared blueberries, simply roll each berry in a little syrup and then into a bowl of caster sugar, ensuring each is covered

19. Decorate your cakes with a chocolate meringue drop, a couple of sugared blueberries and a little viola flower

Chocolate, Blueberry and Lemon Mini Cakes With Hend Krichen