Today is world baking day and originally I planned to have a go at these strawberry pies from level 87. Unfortunately I had to change my plans when I couldn’t get strawberries tonight at our local shop. Instead I decided to have a go at adapting the level 83 hide away heart cupcakes and putting my own spin on them.

I adapted the cupcake recipe from Nigella Lawson’s domestic goddess and instead of colouring the batter for the heart sections I added cocoa to make a chocolate batter.

125g Unsalted butter (softened)

125g Caster sugar

2 eggs (beaten)

1tsp Vanilla essence

125g Self-Raising flour

2-3 table spoons of whole milk.

I use a stand mixer but this can be done y hand also:

• Cream the butter and sugar
• Add the vanilla essence to the beaten egg
• Add the egg mixture to the butter and sugar whilst mixing on a slow speed
• Slowly add the flour.

Normally at this point you would add the milk until the batter drops easily from a spoon however because you want to have both vanilla and chocolate batter do the following.

• remove about a third of the batter to a separate bowl and add 1 tablespoon of cocoa to it. This makes the chocolate batter. Add a tablespoon of milk as adding cocoa to the batter will make it a little to stiff (normally you would reduce flour
• I have a mini hearts silicone tray which I filled with the chocolate batter to make the heart shapes.
• Cook the heart cakes for 10 minutes at 180c and allow to cool. (I didn’t do this tonight but I recommend you do as it will work better – I actually semi-froze the chocolate batter so that my hearts would be uncooked and not become over-dry.)
• Place cupcake cases in a cupcake tray and put a layer of vanilla batter in the base of each case.
• Stand your chocolate hearts upright in the vanilla batter then cover with more vanilla batter.
• Place in a 180c oven for 15 minutes or until a tester comes out clean.
• Inspired by the chocolate theatre at Foodies Festival today I made a ganache for the top with 100g dark chocolate, melted with 75ml of cream VERY slowly and aded 5 or 6 tablespoons of icing sugar. If you like bitter chocolate reduce the cream to 50ml and leave out the icing sugar but I have a sweet tooth 🙂

When my cakes came out they had popped from their cases on one side, this was because the semi-frozen chocolate  batter in the centre had started rising after the top of the vanilla batter had set and had to find somewhere to go. If I had cooked the hearts first this wouldn’t have happened. Also the hearts had become more like triangles.

Oh well – world baking day was about baking brave and trying new things, I did that and have definitely learned a lot for next time I try this recipie.

Calendar cakes is run by Dolly Bakes and Laura Loves Cakes.