I made these mini cake treats this week and thought I’d share the recipe with you. I was inspired by the February inspiration challenge on LucyLovesYa blog - the starting point was this vintage berry necklace below:
This necklace made me think of my pot of hedgerow jam that I’d made myself and I thought it would go nicely in a victoria sponge. But where’s the fun in making a normal sponge cake? So I set about trying to make mini sponge cakes in a muffin mold rather than a cake tin. Here’s how I got on:
Ingredients: 110g/4oz softened butter or margarine, 110g/4oz caster sugar, 2 free-range eggs, 1 tsp vanilla extract, 110g/4oz self-raising flour, 1-2 tbsp milk
- Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4 and crease a silicone muffin mold. Cream the butter and sugar together in a bowl until pale. Beat in the eggs a little at a time and stir in the vanilla extract.
- Fold in the flour using a large metal spoon, adding a little milk until the mixture is of a dropping consistency. Spoon the mixture into the muffin moulds until they are half full and bake for 10-15 minutes – but keep an eye on them and use a cocktail stick to test if they are gooey or cooked in the center.
- Remove from the muffin mold and once the cakes are cooled, cut them in half and spread with your homemade (or shop bought) jam - mine is hedgerow with apple and blackberry but strawberry jam would be equally yummy!
- Mix up some buttercream using butter and icing sugar and a drop of vanilla extract and spread on the opposite side of your mini sponges.
- Dust with icing sugar and serve to willing cake-testers.
I can safely say that these cakes were super-tasty and turned out to be exactly the right portion size for me. And hubby is pretty grateful to Lucylovesya because he got to scoff the lot! I’ll definitely be making these miniatures next time I have an afternoon tea party with my girlies and I know they’ll love them too!
