You don’t need to wait for Easter to enjoy the flavours of a hot cross bun! These Hot Cross Mini Cake Truffles are so moreish that you literally will not be able to stop at one. Further more, if coupled with a delicious hot chocolate, it’s a sure fire way to keep those Winter blues at bay.

Ingredients:

450 grams (3 cups) self raising flour
150 grams (1 cup) plain flour
440 grams (2 cups) caster sugar
6 eggs, at room temperature
300 grams butter, cubed, at room temperature
310ml (1 1/4 cups) milk
3 teaspoons vanilla essence
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
Butter to grease pan.
4 Freddo Frogs
1 container of ready made icing.

Method:

Step 1 – Pre heat the oven to about 140 degrees. You want either the middle or second lowest shelf.

Step 2 – Place all ingredients except for your Freddo’s and icing into a large bowl. This is a no muss no fuss one pan recipe which is right up my alley. Use an electric beater to beat on low speed for around 30 seconds or until just combined and then increase the speed to high and scream while you do it to freak the neighbours out.

Step 3 – I used a square 11 x 11 x 3 pan and greased it. I then lined the sides roughly with baking paper. There is no need to be anal about how neat it looks because we will be blending the end result anyway. Spoon the mixture into the prepared pan and smooth the surface in order to even out the mixture.

Step 4 – Bake in your preheated oven for approx 50 minutes. The time you cook it for depends on the size of your tin. The smaller the tin, the longer you cook it for. If you are using a round 25cm cake pan, you will probably have to cook it for about 2 and a half hours because this is a mammoth of a cake!

Cut the cake to help with the cooling down process

Step 5 – Place your mammoth cake on a wire rack to cool down. Cut it to help with the cooling down process and quickly eat some when no one is looking. You don’t need the corners anyway!

Step 6 – While the cake is cooling down, chop up your Freddo’s finely and put aside. At this stage you can either make your icing if you want to, or you can use a jar of the ready made stuff which is just as good and saves you some washing up.

Step 7 – Once your cake has cooled down completely, place some pieces in a food processor along with some icing and blend until it becomes almost paste like. You may have to do this in batches.

Step 8 – Once all your cake and icing mixture has been blended, it’s time to add your Freddo’s!

Step 9 – Mix your cake and chocolate mixture together, and with a spoon and clean hands, roll small amounts of mixture together to create a ball. Place in mini patty cake liners.

Step 10 – Roll out a small amount of white fondant icing and cut small strips. Place a cross on each of your ready made hot cross cake bite. In addition, you can even pipe some royal icing over the top.

Step 11 – Place in the fridge to cool and set slightly and enjoy!