Toblerone cupcakes – a Mothers’ Day special

How better to spoil your mother on Mothers’ Day than with chocolate and cake all rolled into one? I have long thought that the flavours of Toblerone would lend themselves to a rather special cupcake, and this recipe is my attempt to prove it! The CCM (Caked Crusader’s Ma) is a fan of the triangular delight and subtly commented last week, “I really love cupcakes,”…a hint if ever I heard one!

I wanted to balance the chocolate and almond rather than make something that was dominated by chocolate. That’s why I stuck with my plain cupcake sponge mix adding almond extract and chopped up Toblerone to it. This is what Toblerone looks like when it’s been put through the food processor:

The chocolate kick came from a lusciously rich Ganache topping – if you chill it you can whip it up as you would a buttercream and pipe it. It tastes divine and has the texture of chocolate velvet! One word of warning, and it’s a tough lesson learned by me this morning – if you’re making a double batch of these cakes, the sponge doubles up no problem but make the Ganache as two individual batches because the doubled up amount just wouldn’t whip up to a thick enough consistency whatever I tried. When I started again and made it in two batches, it was fine. It wasn’t a lesson I would have chosen to learn on the morning of Mothers’ Day but hey ho...lessons learned like that aren’t quickly forgotten!

Tiny Toblerones completed the homage to chocolate and almond and proved to be just about the most popular cupcake topper I’ve used!

I’ve always loved Toblerone; growing up there was always a large bar amongst my Christmas presents (the CCM’s doing, of course!) but nowadays I associate it more with heading home. I used to travel a lot for work and you could always rely on spotting a bar of Toblerone in the duty free shop – just one sighting of the triangular bar meant you were homeward bound! Plus, what’s not to love about something that’s so crisply cornered that you can play Tetris with it when stacking it in your cupboard?

The cupcake sponge was delicious and worked so well with the Toblerone inside, acting as chocolate chips. We all agreed that we would happily eat the sponge without any topping:

Happy Mothers’ Day CCM, and all the other mothers out there, not least the CCMIL (Caked Crusader’s Mother in Law)!

Footnote: If I know you like I think I do, several of you will be lusting after the mini cake stand designed for one cupcake! I bought it in Lakeland and it costs £9.99 - you can find it on line here

Ingredients

For the cupcake sponge:
125g unsalted butter, at room temperature
125g caster sugar
2 eggs
½ teaspoon almond extract
125g self raising flour
2 tablespoons milk
100g Toblerone, chopped into small chunks – I used the original Toblerone and pulsed it in the food processor

For the chocolate Ganache (this is probably enough for 24 cupcakes, or 12 with some left over if you’re greedy...like me) :
300ml whipping cream
1 tablespoon liquid glucose
200g plain chocolate, roughly chopped (I actually used ½ dark, ½ milk chocolate)

To decorate: triangles of Toblerone or, if you can find them, tiny Toblerone

Method

Preheat the oven to 190°C/fan oven 170°C/375°F/Gas mark 5.

Line a cupcake pan with paper cases.

Beat together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Don’t skimp on this stage as you want to get lots of air into the mixture. Stop beating when the butter and sugar looks almost like thick whipped cream.

Beat in the eggs, almond extract, flour and milk.

Stir in the chopped Toblerone.

When the mixture is well combined, spoon into the paper cases.

Bake for 12-15 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the cupcakes comes out clean. Mine took 15 minutes.

Leave to cool on a wire rack and remove from the tin when cool enough to handle.

To make the chocolate Ganache: Bring the cream to the boil in a saucepan.

Remove from the heat and stir in the liquid glucose.

Place the chocolate in the cream and stir until the chocolate melts.

Leave to cool and then place in the fridge for 20 minutes or so before whisking to lighten the texture. How long this takes will depend on how much you have cooled the ganache mix – so don’t panic if it doesn’t seem like it will whisk, either keep going, or chill some more and try again in 15 minutes!

If it isn’t firm enough to pipe, refrigerate for 30 mins and try again. Don’t let it sit for too long in the fridge or it will harden.

Pipe or spread over the chocolate cupcakes.

Decorate with tiny Toblerone or individual triangles of Toblerone.

Bask in the glory of the wonderful thing you have created.

Eat.