Mini Chocolate Cake Christmas Puddings

  quick and easy mini Tia Maria chocolate cake Christmas puddings cupcake toppers

Join me on Facebook 

It started yesterday with a "pucker", not a Jamie Oliver pucker but rather puckering cupcake liners after I baked chocolate sour cream cupcakes. 

 puckering of the liner caused by a higher fat recipe, is this case sour cream

Hmmm, what to do? Why crumble the cakes and make mini puds of course! Small faux Christmas puddings are popular in Australia, although usually made from crumbled fruit cake I thought a chocolate version would placate all those that gag at the thought of dried fruit. Besides, they have Tia Maria in them so you know they are going to be good!

Whilst there is no hard and fast recipe for these, I'm giving an example recipe made from six crumbled cupcakes... it will all depend on what cake you have on hand, store bought or homemade; chocolate mud cake, choc sour cream cake, chocolate pound cake or any moist dense chocolate cake would be good.

Makes 18 mini puddings for mini cupcake toppers or 12 mini puddings to serve in chocolate cases.

Ingredients

6 crumbled moist chocolate cupcakes

150g (5.3oz) melted dark eating chocolate

3 tablespoons of *Tia Maria

1/4 cup of cold black coffee sweetened to taste

For decorating you will need melted white chocolate and any of the following... green and red sprinkles, edible glitter, chopped green and red glace cherries, chopped green and red jelly lollies or do what I did and make fondant leaves and a "cherry". 

Method

I started with 6 chocolate cupcakes and crumbled them into a mixing bowl.

Stir in your melted chocolate and Tia Maria. Scoop up a little of mixture and squeeze it in your hand, if it feels moist and stays together it's ready, if it feels dry add a little of the coffee repeating the squeeze test until you have a truffle like consistency. Roll a practice ball, it should be smooth with no "cracking", add more coffee if necessary. 

Moist mixture stays together and can easily rolled into balls

Roll your pudding balls and top with a small amount of *melted white chocolate and top with sprinkles of choice.

I used mine to top 12 mini ganache topped cupcakes. Just so cute they would make a perfect chocolate lovers gift this holiday season.

Happy Baking :)

*for orange choc mini puddings replace the Tia Maria and Coffee with Grand Marnier and orange juice.

*for an alcohol free version replace the Tia Maria and Coffee with orange juice and also add 1/2 teaspoon of orange zest

Mini cupcake liners from Martha Stewart Crafts ... note postage to Australia is slow, about 4 weeks.