mojito birthday cake

I woke up the other day remembering that it was a friends birthday. I would be seeing her in two hours and would be a bad friend if I didn't bring her a birthday cake, so I frantically filed through the 'cakes-to-make' list in my head and chose one that I thought was achievable in the short time that I had. Settling on a mojito cake, I dragged myself out of bed and whipped this cake up in no time... And somewhere between adding the single egg, pouring the mixture into a smaller-than-normal tin and seeing the end result I realised that something had gone wrong.

The cake was TINY. It was embarrassingly small for the group of 8 people that were supposed to be consuming it. Not small enough that it could be a joke but definitely not big enough to properly feed everyone. Sigh. Somewhere amid my freak out I checked the recipe book one more time to see what I had done wrong, and there it was, right in the heading, the recipe was for teeny, tiny, mini Mojito cupcakes.

Okay, so it wasn't that bad. We did all get a slice of cake even if it was a tad smaller than the standard sized slice. It was delicious, (like, stupidly delicious) so that made up for it! 

Here is the recipe, with doubled quantities so that you end up with a normal sized cake or a dozen regular sized cupcakes!

Mojito Cake

adapted from the hummingbird bakery's cake days

200ml white rum

1.5 cups caster sugar

6 Tbs unsalted butter

1 cup plain flour

1/2 tsp salt

3 tsp baking powder

2 tsp grated lime zest

2 tsp grated lemon zest

2 Tbs chopped fresh mint

2 large eggs

1 cup whole milk

1 tsp vanilla extract

1. Preheat the oven to 170C. Grease and flour a regular sized cake tin or line a cupcake tray. 

2. Combine white rum and two tablespoons of the caster sugar in a small saucepan. Bring to the boil until it reduces by a half. 

3. In a regular bowl beat together the butter, flour, salt, baking powder, zest, mint and remaining sugar until the mixture resembles course bread crumbs. 

4. Whisk together the wet ingredients and slowly beat into the dry mixture. 

5. Pour into the prepared tin and bake for 25-30 minutes, until golden brown. When the cake is done and while it is still warm, prick it with a skewer and drench it with the rum syrup. 

Spiked citrus icing

3/4 cup unsalted butter

1 1/4 cup icing sugar

1/2 tsp lemon zest

1/2 tsp lime zest

4 tsp whole milk

4 tsp white rum

1 Tbs caster sugar

mint leaves to garnish

1. In a jug stir together the milk and the rum.  Cream together the butter, icing sugar and zest. Slowly pour in the milk mixture and beat until light and fluffy. 

2. Wait until the cake has completely cooled before icing. 

Tada! One scrumptious normal sized cake!