Red Wine Chocolate Mini Cakes

If there is one thing I love in life, it's red wine - after family and friends and all those things you are supposed to say first, that is. The point is it's up there on my list of favorite things... so when my birthday rolled around this past weekend it seemed like the perfect opportunity to test out a cake recipe I found a few months ago that damn near knocked my socks off! Red Wine Chocolate Cake. 

.......

Sorry, I was busy salivating at the title. Gets me every time. 

Anthropologie+Red Wine+Leopard Print Muffin Liners? Hells. Yes.

Now, if you'll recall - as I'm sure you do - for Caroline's birthday in January, we made some pretty fancy Red Velvet Cupcakes. Well readers, consider this cake the REAL Red Velvet of cakes. It's a dense little cake with a lot of flavour - the red wine doesn't all burn off in the oven, and the cinnamon/chocolate combo gives the cake a beautiful kick. Thought I forgot about the topping? NOPE! It's just as awesome. Think "glorified whipped cream"... a.k.a. whipped cream+mascarpone cheese... a.k.a. delicious.  

To give its due praise, this recipe hails from our go-to food blog Smitten Kitchen. The original recipe calls for making a cake. We nixed that in favor of making cupcakes - erm, mini-cakes (because it sounds fancier, plus these little darlings really do turn out more like miniature cakes than your standard cupcake). It also allowed us to use some sweet leopard print muffin liners Caroline so graciously gave me as a birthday gift! Double win. You know what ELSE she got me? An Anthropologie apron of my very own! 

Twin-sies!!

showing of "the goods"

Now I know we've gotten into the habit of saying this a lot - but this cake is actually very quick and easy to make! Who knew baking was such a breeze? But to give you an idea on just how easy we mean when we say easy (and we mean EASY), lets compare this blog recipe to ooohh I don't know - our 3 course Italian feast that took about 10 hours to complete...? Even with our dilly-dallying, wine drinking, and what I'll call other-peoples-blogs-bashing (more on that later), we finished baking, photographing and taste testing this cake in under 3 hours! Believe me that's kind of a miracle. I would stab a guess at saying if you were baking this cake solo, or with a non-blogging/obsessed with taking pictures friend, you could probably get it done in under an hour (baking time included!). That being said, let's get to it:

THE RECIPE:

6 tbsp unsalted butter, at room temperature

3/4 cup firmly packed dark brown sugar

1/4 cup granulated sugar

1 large egg + 1 egg yolk, at room temperature

3/4 red wine* (plus an extra splash or two)

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 cup + 1 tbsp all-purpose flour

1/3 cup Dutch cocoa powder

1/8 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp table salt

1/4 tsp ground cinnamon

Come on, you knew this was coming right?
I just have a thing for playing with raw eggs...
that's not weird right?

1. Preheat oven to 325 and line bottom of a 9-inch round cake pan with parchment or spray with non-stick spray, or line muffin tins with muffin liners (in leopard print like ours, if you dare
2. In large bowl, cream the butter until smooth on medium speed. Add the sugars and beat until fluffy.
3. Add the egg and yolk and beat well, then add the red wine and vanilla. Don't worry if the batter is a little uneven, it will all work out in the end!
4. Sift the flour, cocoa, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon and salt together, right over your wet ingredients. Mix until 3/4 combined, then fold the rest together with a rubber spatula.
5. Spread batter into prepared pan. Bake for about 25 minutes, or until a cake tester comes out clean. The top of the cake will be shiny.
6. Cool in pan for about 10 minutes than remove - if you use a 9" inch cake pan, flip the cake out of the pan and cool the rest of the way on a cooling rack. If you used a muffin tray, they may be a bit easier to get out to move to the cooling rack.




*We used Fuzion - since the wine is going into a cake, it's not really that important to use a really expensive wine... although it doesn't hurt if you enjoy the taste of the wine for when you're sipping on it while you bake. 

Red Wine made several appearance that afternoon. In the recipe, in our mouths, and as a measuring cup... I mean NAME me a better measuring device for wine than a wine glass?

Topping:

1/2 cup mascarpone cheese

1/2 cup chilled heavy or whipping cream

2 tbsp granulated sugar

1/4 tsp vanilla extract

1. Whip mascarpone, cream, sugar and vanilla together until soft peaks form. Dollop generously (emphasis on the generously) onto each slice of cake, or on top of each mini cake. The topping can be covered and refrigerated for up to 4 hours.

Sidenote: We left decorating - or rather "dolloping" until we were ready to serve the minicakes. The topping isn't like a frosting. You don't "ice" these wine-filled treats. The topping is best kept in an airtight container for storing and traveling until just before serving!

Minicakes all packed up and ready to go - who new an Anthropologie gift box could be so multi-purpose?

Happy Baking! Happy Eating! Happy (belated) Birthday to Me!

Jo