Miniature Chocolate Dundee Cakes

Getting a Christmas hamper of goodies together has been my task this month. Among the components I wanted to include were some miniature Christmas cakes. On browsing the wonderful blog Lavender and Lovage one day, I was inspired by Karen's recipe for Wee Whisky Doused Hogmanay Dundee Cakes. Well mine are even weeer. I used a different method and some different ingredients - like chocolate ;-)

This is what I did:

• Placed 300g of mixed fruit into a bowl - mostly vine, but a few chopped dates, pineapple, papaya and cranberries.
• Added grated zest and juice of 1 very juicy orange.
• Stirred in 50ml of Scotch Whisky and two tsp of orange syrup (left over from making candied peel).
• Covered and placed on top of our storage heater for a couple of hours (a low oven would be fine or could just be left somewhere overnight).
• Creamed 100g unsalted butter with 100g light brown raw cane sugar.
• Beat in 2 small eggs.
• Sieved in 150g self-raising flour, 50g wholemeal spelt, 1/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda.
• Stirred in 25g ground almonds.
• Added 50g chopped 70% G&B dark chocolate and the fruit mixture.
• Mixed well and spooned into two 6 hole muffin moulds.
• Pressed 6 whole blanched almonds onto each one.
• Baked for 35 minutes at 150C.
• Left to cool for half an hour then turned out onto a wire rack to cool completely.
• Wrapped them in greaseproof paper and packed them away in a tin.

I haven't tried them yet, but am expecting good things of them. I have bought some nice Christmassy ribbon to border the edges when the time comes for presenting them - see if you can guess which one it will be?

I am submitting these to English Mum's Big Christmas Bakeoff.

For more ideas of edible gifts check out Vanessa's Lets Make Christmas.