mini chocolate pounds.

I'm so totally psyched today because today's the day my photobucket bandwidth gets resetted and all pictures become visible again! Selfish as a reason it may seem but my main worry of my pictures not being able to be viewed was decreased blog traffic. Well thankfully it did not dip that much. But anyway, I'm here today to boost it back up with this post, because chocolate always gets anyone's attention, especially shiny dripping chocolate glaze.

I deviated a bit from the original recipe because I was lacking orange extract. I didn't even have oranges in the fridge to zest in place of the extract so I scraped the orange part of the recipe and did some modifications. For the cream cheese filling in the middle, instead of the orange extract that was to be mixed in, I swirled in some apricot jam. I left out the orange extract in the cake batter and used brown sugar in place of regular sugar to make up for the loss in flavour. I simply omitted the orange extract in the glaze.

The cake itself is chocolaty and dense but not fudgy brownie kind of dense. It's also quite crumbly but not in a bad way. The apricot cream cheese filling turned out pretty alright too. I may have mixed in a bit too much apricot jam though, because the filling wasn't as tangy as I would prefer it to be. The glaze needs a considerable cut in sugar level and the coffee in it, usually used in chocolate recipes to amplify the chocolate flavour, shows up pretty prominently. It isn't that terrific but it complements the whole ensemble. Overall, this recipe is definitely one worth trying.

So hey, I've been thinking for a while and I've decided to hop onto the instagram bandwagon! Yeah, I'm slow, but better late than never! So please follow me on instagram and check out all my latest bakes, previous hits and obscene amount of sugar I ingest on a hourly basis! It's gonna be fun. And yes I'm bolding this because that's how much I want you to see this.

Mini Chocolate Pounds
adapted from Bake It Like You Mean It
makes 9 muffin-sized cakes

For the filling:
1 cup cream cheese
1/4 cup icing sugar, sifted
3 tbsp apricot jam

For the cake:
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup butter
3 eggs
1 cup all-purpose flour
3/4 cup cocoa powder
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt

For the glaze:
1/4 cup coffee, cool
1 tsp powdered gelatin
1/4 cup heavy cream
1/4 cup cocoa powder
1/3 cup sugar
1 ounce bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped

Make the filling: Mix the cream cheese and icing sugar together until smooth. Swirl in the jam, don't mix it in completely. Refrigerate until firm.

Make the cake: Preheat oven to 325F. Butter and spray muffin tin.

Cream the butter and brown sugar until light and fluffy. Incorporate the eggs one at a time.

Whisk the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder and salt together. Stir in the flour mixture into the butter mixture until just combined.

Divide batter equally amongst the cavities of the prepared muffin tin. Scoop a tablespoon of cream cheese filling and press it into the middle of the batter. Bake for about 15 minutes or until done. Cool cakes completely before glazing.

Make the glaze: Place the coffee in a bowl. Sprinkle gelatin over and allow it to bloom, about 3 minutes.

Combine the cream, cocoa powder and sugar in a small saucepan. Bring to a simmer over medium heat and stir until mixture is homogenous. Stir in gelatin mixture. Remove from heat.

Place chopped chocolate in a bowl. Pour the cream mixture over the chopped chocolate and let the mixture stand for 2 minutes then stir to combine. You can pour the glaze through a fine-mesh sieve for a smoother result or use it as it is. Let the glaze cool and thicken for about 5 minutes.

Pour the glaze over the cooled cakes and allow it to set at room temperature, about 20 minutes.