Ghiradelli Mint Chocolate Mini Cakes

Here's a twist on mint cupcakes that we've been posting this week. These are called “mini cakes” because they're stacked like a cake, but it's essentially a decked out cupcake.  But do we really need an excuse to get more chocolate mint cake ideas published? Nope.

So we're going to start out with any cake recipe you like. You pick! For this recipe, I recommend something dense, dark, and chocolatey. We're going to freeze these, and personally, I think fluffier recipes don't stand up to the freezer as well. I also think that a denser recipe will stand up to getting cut an handled better.

Here's a visual of the ingredients we'll need to make these decadent cakes.

Start out by cutting the tops off of your muffins. Don't waste them! You can make mini treats or just feed them to the kids. Maybe a monster cupcake is in order. That's still good cake man.

Cut once again. These will be our top and bottom of the cake.

Our mint buttercream frosting here is pretty typical. You can buy it premade, or make your own with just butter, milk, confectioners sugar, and peppermint extract (plus green food coloring). Use a piping tool or a knife to make your first layer of cream. The cover with the second part of the muffin you just cut.

This next step uses crushed cookies to dot the outside of the cake. In the video you'll see that they don't stick very well, so I think it was a bit overkill, but you can still do this part if you want. Crushed chocolate cookies will be fine, but if you can crush up some frozen thin mints that would be even tastier.

Pipe out your next layer of mint buttercream frosting. This is the top layer of our cake, and will be covered in delicious melted chocolate in the next step. Stick your cake in the freezer to harden the frosting, so that it doesn't get all squishy and melty in the next step (the chocolate will be warm)

Melt a bowl of chocolate chips or chocolate rounds and spoon over our now-frozen cake. Don't let the chocolate get too hot though, it can very easily burn. Plus, we don't want to melt the buttercream as we pour it over the top. We also don't want it to get too hard though, because then it won't have the nice melted, dripping effect.

Top with a Ghiradelli mint chocolate square, and let sit. You can stick it in the freezer to speed up the cooling process and solidify the chocolate as well.

The written recipe can be found in the description of the YouTube video below.