Individual Coffee Mascapone Cream Chocolate Cake....

Monique's kinder is having a Christmas party today, and all the parents are bringing food in for morning tea after the Christmas concert.


The children did a wonderful job performing a show of Santa in Aussie Bush!


We had a big food list, and I was very happy that I got the job of providing small cakes.... 


I was thinking about that for a week and couldn't decide what to bring, but I ended up with 2 types of cakes:  Individual Coffee Mascapone Cream Chocolate Sponge and Big Profiteroles with Chocolate Creme Patisserie and Chocolate Glaze.

I must admit that the individual cakes are largely influenced by Tiramisu, which is one of the all time favourite in the family.

I used Margaret Fulton's Whisked Sponge cake recipe as the base recipe for the chocolate sponge:

3 eggs
3/4 cup caster sugar
1 cup self-raising flour, sifted
1 teaspoon melted butter
2 table spoons of boiling water
25g dutched cocoa powder - sift with flour

Line and grease a 20cm x 30cm swiss roll tray.
whisk eggs and sugar until thick and pale and leaves a trail when lifting up the whisk (hey, that's why I bought a new bench top mixer)
Fold in flour, cocoa powder, butter and water with a metal spoon, then turn into the prepared tray.
Bake in a preheated moderate hot oven - 190C or 375F for 20 minutes or until ready.
Turn over on another tray and cool, but cover with the baking paper to retain moist.

When the sponge is being baked, make the frosting:
250g mascapone cheese
250ml thickened cream
3 egg whites
60g caster sugar

Liqueur Coffee Mix:
1 shot of strong espresso coffee, either using perculator coffee, but if pressing time, use good instant espresso coffee.
1 table spoon of Marsala

Whisk egg whites until soft peak, gradually beat in sugar, 1 table spoon at a time, until it's glossy and peak form.
Use a seperate bowl, beat cream till soft peak and add room temperatured mascapone cheese, mix well.
Gently fold in the meringue, and add in half of the liqueur coffee mix.

Spread half of the liqueur coffee mix on the cooled sponge.

use a round cookie cutter (up to each individual to decide size), cut out a piece of the sponge, the sponge is very light and rose quite high, so I actually sliced it length ways into 2 disks.

Place the bottom layer of the sponge into the cup cake casing,

Pipe the frosting onto one layer and put on the top layer of sponge, pipe more frosting to cover the top and spinkle (sift) on extra dutched cocoa powder.

The good thing about these little cakes is that they are fridge friendly and better after setting in fridge over night, so I don't need to do any rushing around for the 10 am Christmas concert!

I will update a post about the big profiterole buns tomorrow.