Chocolate & Orange Mini Cake

When a rich chocolate cake would be too heavy let's balance it with a fruity filling, even better with some acidic citruses. This is what this Chocolate & Orange Mini Cake promises!

I prefer to create individual desserts for afternoon tea, birthdays or summer parties. They not only look more decent regarding they are individually decorated to perfection but hey... who does not like the fact to eat a whole cake without any regrets?

This recipe also has been published in UK's Baking Heaven magazine.

Ingredients

Cocoa sponge

• 4 eggs
• 100 g sugar
• 40 g cocoa powder
• 1 pinch salt

Orange buttercream

• 125 g butter, on room temperature
• 10-12 tbsp icing sugar
• 2 tbsp marmalade
• Juice of half orange

Chocolate drizzle

• 250 ml icing sugar
• 100 ml water
• 3 tbsp cocoa powder
• 1 tbsp oil

Instructions

Cocoa sponge

1. Preheat the oven to 160 °C (fan), line a general Swiss Roll tray with parchment paper.
2. Separate the eggs.
3. Place the whites into a mixing bowl, add the salt and whip them until you get a firm foam.
4. Put the yolks and the sugar in a separate bowl and whip them till the mixture is creamy and pale in colour. Incorporate the sifted cocoa powder.
5. Gently fold the egg white foam into the cocoa-yolk mixture.
6. Pour the batter into the lined Swiss roll tray and bake it until it passes the 'toothpick-test' in about 15 minutes.
7. Let the sponge cool down completely before you remove the parchment from its bottom.
8. Use a 7 cm (3") round cookie cutter and cut out discs from the sponge. From a normal Swiss roll size, you can cut out 15 discs that will make 5 mini cakes.

Orange buttercream

1. Soften the butter with a hand mixer.
2. Add the marmalade and the orange juice and mix well with the butter.
3. Add the sifted icing sugar gradually until you get stiff peaks consistency.
4. Fill the buttercream into a piping bag using a closed star tip.

Chocolate drizzle

1. Mix the ingredients.
2. Fill the sauce into a piping bag or chef's bottle.

Assembly

1. Pipe a swirl of orange buttercream on a sponge disk, place another disc on the top of the cream, then pipe another swirl on top. Close the mini tart with a third disc.
2. Cover the top of the mini cake with the chocolate drizzle, use a small palette knife to evenly distribute it on the surface.
3. Decorate the cake as you like. For these cakes, chocolate sprinkle, a slice of fresh orange, edible flowers and mint leaves have been used.

Did YOU try this recipe?

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