chai tiramisu cupcakes

To celebrate the birthday of the lovely Caroline I wanted to make her a cake that was nothing less then special. I've been thinking about this combination for a while now. Tiramisu is traditionally with coffee so I figured chai tea would work in a similar way. The first time I made this dessert it didn't work at all, actually it reminded me of clag glue with honey; Obviously I'm not very cluey with custard! So to make it a little easier on myself I thought - Cupcakes!  Hooray for Cupcakes!

I bought the very special Dolfin Chocolat, au hot masala. A lovely subtle chai spiced chocolate from Belgium and teamed it with some marscapone and a custard flavoured cupcake - Ta dah! Chai Tiramisu Cupcakes!

Make them for someone special.

Ingredients

3 cups Self Raising flour, sifted
2/3 cup vanilla custard powder, sifted
dash of salt
1 cup caster sugar

2 cups water
2/3 cup canola oil
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 tablespoons lemon juice

100g Dolfin Chocolat - au hot masala (2 x 70g packets)
2 tablespoons pouring cream

125g marscapone

Ground cinnamon, for dusting

How to make your Chai Tiramisu Cupcakes

Pre-heat oven to 180C or 160C fan forced. Line 2 x 12 hole muffin pans with cases.

Sift flour into a large bowl along with salt and custard powder. Stir through caster sugar. In a seperate bowl combine water, oil, vanilla and lemon juice. Whisk the liquid into the dry ingredients until smooth. Divide among cases. The mix is quite runny, don't worry! I use a 1/4 cup measure which gives me 24 cupcakes exactly.  bake for 25 minutes. Remove when ready and allow to cool slightly in the muffin tray. Cool completely on a rack.

When cooled and you are ready to serve them cut out circles in the top of each cake, cutting an an angle, almost like a funnel shape, keeping each round as you'll place these like a hat over the choc and marscapone (I used a muffin tree which held 19 cupcakes and the chocolate mix was just enough. If you want to make the full 24 chai tiramisu cupcakes you can either use a little less chocolate in each cupcake or use more chocolate in the melting process)

Using a small saucepan add 2 tablespoons of pouring cream and 100g of the hot masala chocolate. Using a spatula stir over a low heat until melted and smooth. set aside to cool for a minute.

Spoon in a little pool of chocolate into each round, top with a little dollop of marscapone (roughly the same amount) place the round at a slight angle and dust with the ground cinnamon. Enjoy immediately. Maybe with some chai tea too!

Happy Birthdays!