Dan Lepard's Chocolate Macaroon Cakes

This was another case of seeing a recipe and wanting to make it immediately! It was a little naughty of me, as the cakes contain butter, but I thought it was quite a small proportion compared to the amount usually in cakes of this type. Of course, there was the double cream too.......

Anyway,  the recipe is published in the March issue of the Waitrose Kitchen magazine as a Mother's Day treat - see here. There's no chance of me getting a Mother's Day treat unless I bake it myself, so why wait? The method is very similar to Dan's much loved Chocolate Custard Muffins, in that a cocoa based custard is made first, to which the other ingredients are added. The topping of crushed Amaretti biscuits was inspired - I love crunchy streusel toppings on cakes and this was an instant way of achieving one. I used 60g of the tiny ratafia biscuit to top twelve buns.

Of course, things rarely go smoothly, and I found I was short of a few muffin cases. I used squares of baking parchment instead, and although I liked the visual effect, working with pieces of paper which don't want to hold their folded shape and keep trying to spring flat again was quite frustrating. Fortunately there were only four of them, or the cake batter might have ended up on the kitchen walls.

The finshed cakes were richly chocolatey, dense and moist. They were unlike either spongey cupcakes or muffins - more like a cakey brownie, or the best sort of rich chocolate cake. The ground almonds in the cake mixture add nicely to the almondy flavour of the topping. This recipe is one to try for those not keen on muffins or over-frosted cupcakes, I think. I'll definitely be making them again for special occasions.