Ah prep bowls, I've missed you.
I think it's a good idea when you get to the end of this post if you scroll back up and see how pretty and organized I began this recipe. In fact it ended so messily and not yummy that I'm not even going to post the recipe. I doubt this will inspire anyone to try to make these buggers anyway.
I've never used my sifter/strainer so much in one recipe. I often skip sifting ingredients - I know, bad baker, bad! This icing sugar was pretty chunky looking so I gave it a go:
The recipe specifically said to make sure you smoothed the top of the cake batter prior to baking. I really thought I had, but looking back at this photo (and the final product) I'm beginning to think otherwise.
You see, this here, this isn't smooth.
After baking I was to cut the cake in half, smear with a (strained!) apricot jam and place the pieces back together again. Julia off-handedly told me to use my 1 inch circle cookie cutter. Yeah, I don't have one of those. My dear husband made a run up to Degrees to help me out. I told him before leaving that it didn't need to be more than an inch high because my cake would be cut in half. I forgot that I had to put the cake back together again before cutting out the circle shapes. So I had the brilliant idea to just cut out the circles on the halves separately and then stick them together. It sort of worked, sort of didn't. I think the main problem was the top of the cake was a little rough and firm, so I didn't achieve perfect circles.
Next up we melted a bunch of chocolate. First the white chocolate was turned into a glaze and poured over the little wee cakes.
Next I melted the dark chocolate and poured it into a Ziploc bag with a wee hole snipped in the end. This was my ghetto way of decorating, not the most accurate thing in the world. And holy crap, did you know that melted chocolate held in your fist is HOT? Because it is. You have to trust that my hand is burning in this photo.
This it the mess I made:
And this is the final product:
And those are glazed mini rounds. I don't know if I am the best judge, because I don't care for white chocolate - but these weren't that great. They tasted like pound cake coated in chocolate. But worse.
