Valentine's Delight Numero 2

So Valentine's Cake number two was a bit of an experiment. And one which turned out very very well.

I love, no wait, adore white chocolate. MUCH better than the other stuff in my opinion. So when I saw recipes online for white chocolate mud cake, I decided a cupcake version was required.

However I usually find mud cakes a little hard going so I decided that a filling was needed to lighten things up a bit. I tried a few with whole strawberries in the middle, but the eventual winner was strawberry jam. YUM.

Sorry about the crap picture - all I had to hand was my iPhone!

These turned out EXACTLY how I hoped - dense and fluffy at the same time, with that lovely pocket of starwberry gooyness! The white chocolate is subtle in the sponge, so I decided I may as well overdose on the stuff and made a white chocolate ganache to put on top.

I'll confess - I had planned to chill and whip the ganache and pipe pretty patterns on top. But warm, meltey, chocolatey ganache was far too good to resist, so I poured the stuff straight on, mainly so I could lick the bowl. Ashamed? Not a bit!!!

When cooled, the ganache was just the right softness to be slightly gooey and sticky, but lovely and velvety too. Each cake was topped with a caramel filled, chocolate heart. (They didn't last long either...)

I don't usually eat too much of my own baking because if I did, I'd be the size of a hippo. But with these, I couldn't resist. They kept calling my name...

"Colene, eat me...EAT ME!!!"

So, all in all, the White Chocolate and Strawberry mudcakes were a success. I'm making more tonight actually, but with a Nutella centre for my friend who doesn't like berries (weeeeiiiirrrdddd), and I'm going to try to wait a little longer on the ganache front.

Oh and I'll try not to eat them all...

Love,

Colene

xxx