A friend asked me recently what my favourite thing is to do on my blog and I immediately showed her the pictures of the chocolate teacakes I had made the week before.
You know when you start to talk about something and you just kind of glow, and you know it’s something that makes you happy? I felt like that about the chocolate teacakes.
Although I don’t like the tedium of having to cook actual meals day in day out, I do love baking. I find it completely absorbing, I don’t think about anything else, my mind is focused on the weighing and measuring and pouring and mixing. I find I can get into a lovely, relaxed sort of trance state with baking, where I just waft around the kitchen in a cloud of flour, the world shrunk down to the size of a 9 inch cake tin.
It’s not even about eating it afterwards, (although I do eat a lot of mixture as a go – finger fulls of cake batter or melted chocolate and pinches of sweet biscuit dough), I just love the process.
I particularly enjoy recreating things that I know already, like when I made those homemade party rings, do you remember? Blimey, they turned out so much better than I ever thought they would. Or the homemade jammie dodgers? I was really pleased with those.
For this post though I’ve made homemade vegetarian chocolate teacakes.
My homemade chocolate teacakes are a bit like a Tunnocks teacake, but with thicker chocolate and more of a sense of achievement. I mention the vegetarian bit particularly as the marshmallow is made without gelatin, so it’s all suitable for vegetarians. You know how the marshmallow in a Tunnocks teacake is soft and creamy? It’s like that. Not like the M&S chocolate teacakes where the marshmallow is more solid.
It’s so creamy that you actually pipe it onto the biscuit base, which I have to say was rather satisfying.
Fancy having a go?
I’ll be honest and say it is a bit of a faff in parts, and you could just buy a packet of Tunnocks teacakes, but it’s not really about that is it? If you enjoy letting your mind wander and your brain relax as you whisk up a homemade marshmallow then you’re going to love it.
Homemade chocolate teacakes – ingredients
To make your own vegetarian marshmallow chocolate teacakes, (approx 12-15 of them), you will need:
For the biscuit base:
- 30g oats
- 30g plain flour
- 30g butter
- 15g muscovado sugar
- 1/2 tsp baking powder
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 1 tbsp milk
For the marshmallow:
- 2 egg whites
- 100g caster sugar
- 1.5 tbsp golden syrup
- 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
For the chocolate coating:
- 200g dark chocolate
- 25g butter
Homemade chocolate teacakes – method
Start with the biscuit base by blitzing the oats in a food processor until they’re more of a fine powder. Add the flour and cubed butter and give it another whizz until you have breadcrumbs. (You can do this bit with your hands if you prefer, like you would for a pastry or crumble topping.)
Transfer to a bowl, add the sugar, baking powder and salt, and just the teeniest bit of milk at a time, bringing it together with your hands until you have a sticky dough. Wrap the dough in clingfilm and give it 20 minutes in the fridge just to firm up.
Line a large baking sheet with baking paper and preheat the oven to 180C, slightly less for a fan oven.
Roll your dough on a well floured surface to about half a centimetre thickness and cut out discs – I’d say about 5cm diameter? About chocolate teacake size. Pop onto the lined tray and cook until starting to turn golden – about ten minutes or so.
While the biscuit bases cool completely, time to make the vegetarian marshmallow, which is pretty simple to be honest. Simply put all the ingredients into a bowl set over a pan of just simmering water. (Don’t let the base of the bowl touch the water.) Go to it with an electric whisk for a generous five minutes until your mixture is creamy and about doubled in size. You’re looking for something that’s going to keep its shape once piped, so think thick whipped cream. (Who doesn’t?)
Give it a few minutes to cool down a smidge and then transfer your vegetarian marshmallow to a piping bag and pipe some onto each biscuit, just like in my picture. Set at room temperature for an hour.
When the marshmallow is ready, it’s chocolate time. You make the chocolatey mixture by simply melting your chocolate and butter together in a similar ‘bowl over a pan of water’ arrangement, or in the microwave, although be careful melting chocolate in a microwave as it can burn quickly, so check and stir it VERY regularly.
Then comes probably the fussiest and definitely the messiest part of proceedings – coating the marshmallow in the chocolate. There isn’t really an easy way to do this, so just get stuck in I’d say. A couple of forks might help for dunking, and I found it useful to scrap some of the excess off the bottoms, as it stuck really thickly here.
Pop each teacake back on your baking paper once it’s done and then transfer them to the fridge for the chocolate to set. Once the chocolate is hard you can transfer your homemade chocolate teacakes to an airtight container and they will keep in the fridge or just somewhere cool for a few days, if they last that long.
All that’s left to do then is put the kettle on, wow your friends with your baking skills, write to Tunnocks asking for a job as chief chocolate teacake maker etc etc.
Enjoy!
P.S. If you like my homemade chocolate marshmallow teacakes you’re going to love homemade jaffa cakes and homemade bourbon biscuits.