Chocolate Irish Potato Mini Cakes

With all the holidays coming up, I am looking for more individualized desserts instead of big pies or cakes.  This particular recipe is actually for a 12 cup bundt cake, but I halved the recipe and made these little cakes.

The interesting thing is that the moist texture comes from the mashed potatoes.  You definitely need to use real mashed potatoes, not instant.  Also, this recipe has Irish Cream liqueur in it.  Not just a few tablespoons but a whole cup, which makes these extra special.  I would say they tasted like little brownie cakes with  a zing of Irish cream.

The original recipe for the whole bundt cake is below.  Should you decide to make mini cakes, cupcakes or try any other deviation from the whole cake, the baking time should be adjusted.  I have not stated the time for mine because I consider my pan to be out of the norm.  The cavities are bigger than mini muffins but not as big as cupcakes.

Chocolate Irish Potato Cake
adapted from 365 Great Chocolate Desserts

Ingredients
1 3/4 cups of flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup or 2 sticks of butter, softened
1 1/2 cups sugar
4  one ounce squares of unsweetened chocolate, melted
1 cup mashed potatoes
1 tbs espresso powder or instant coffee
4 eggs, room temperature
1 cup Irish Cream liqueur
powdered sugar (optional, for dusting cake)

Make sure that the melted chocolate as well as the mashed potatoes have cooled before starting on this cake.  Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and generously grease a 12 cup bundt pan.

Sift together the flour, baking powder and salt.  Set aside.

Take another bowl out and cream together butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the espresso powder or instant coffee (whichever one you decided to use), melted chocolate and mashed potatoes.  Beat until all is smooth and evenly distributed.  This should take about 2 minutes.  Add an egg to the batter and beat for 30 seconds.  Continue with this process until all the eggs are incorporated into the batter.

Fold half of the flour mixture into the chocolate batter, making sure no dry streaks remain.  Then blend in the cup of the Irish cream.  Lastly, fold in the rest of the flour mixture until the all ingredients are well combined.  Spoon evenly into prepared cake pan.

Place pan in oven and bake until tester comes out clean.  Baking time should be about 45-50 minutes.  Let the cake cool in the pan for about 20 minutes and then invert cake onto a rack to finish cooling.  If you have elected to dust with powdered sugar, do this step prior to cutting and serving. 
                                **LAST YEAR: Annie's Banana Cookies**

B52 Cookies

In case you are unfamiliar with the bar drink called a B52, I will explain.  It is a drink that is made up of layers of liqueur.  The sequence of the layering is based on the weight of the liquid as is layered in this order:  Baileys Irish Cream on the bottom, Kahlua or coffee liqueur in the middle and Grand Marnier or orange liqueur on top.  There is some bartender skill involved to make sure that the liquid does not mix and the layering stays intact as pictured below.

Anyhow, this recipe duplicates the layered flavors in a cookie form.  It has one basic dough that is separated into thirds and flavored.  Then the dough is stacked in layers and cut to form the cookies.

My cookies did not turn out with perfect edges, but I feel that maybe a sharper knife and freezing the dough longer would have helped.  However, these are homemade and not manufactured, so maybe the non-perfect edges are a good thing.

As far as taste, you can taste the liqueur flavors in each of these layers and the chocolate chips compliment each flavor layer.  The texture and ingredients in the cookie base very much resemble sable cookies. Now on to the recipe, it makes about 2 dozen cookies:

B52 Cookies
courtesy of Sophisticated Cookie Cookbook

Ingredients
2 tbs Baileys Irish Cream
2 tbs Kahlua
1 tsp instant espresso powder
2 tbs Grand Marnier
1 cup mini semi sweet chocolate chips
1 egg
1/2 cup unsalted butter (room temp)
1 cup sugar
1 tsp baking powder
2 1/4 cup flour

Sift together flour and baking powder in a medium size bowl.  Set aside.  In another bowl, cream together butter and sugar.  This should take about 2 minutes on medium high speed.  Then beat in egg until blended.

With a wooden spoon, fold flour mixture into butter/sugar batter until no dry streaks remain.  Then stir in the chocolate chips so they are evenly distributed throughout the dough.  Divide the dough into 3 pieces and place each in a separate bowl.

Take a small bowl and add the Kahlua and espresso and still until the espresso dissolves.  Set aside.

Line up your bowls of dough.   Going from left to right you will flavor the dough.  In the first bowl, mix the Baileys Irish Cream into the dough.  In the second bowl of dough, stir in the Kahlua/espresso mixture.  In the last bowl, stir in the Grand Marnier.

Each piece of dough will need to be checked for consistency before rolling out between pieces of waxed paper.  I found that my Kahlua dough was a not as stiff as the other dough, so I placed it in the freezer for 10 minutes.

Once the pieces are of rolling consistency, each will need to be placed between sheets of wax paper. You will need to keep track of the flavors, so it is best to roll them out and line them up in the same order as noted above. Roll each piece into a rectangle, about 1/2 inch thick, 3 inches wide and about 10 inches long.  Place each piece of dough on a separate baking sheet and place in freezer for 10 minutes.

Remove baking sheets and peel off the wax paper of the Baileys dough.  Place back on baking sheet.  Then peel the wax paper off of the Kahlua dough and stack on top of the Baileys dough, making sure that the edges are even as possible.  Lastly, remove the wax paper from the last layer (Grand Marnier) of the dough and stack it on top of the Kahlua dough.  Wrap the whole block in plastic wrap and freeze for at least 30 minutes or up to an hour.

During this time, preheat your oven to 350 degrees and lightly grease baking sheets.

Remove block from freezer once chilling time is complete.  With a sharp knife, square off all sides so that the rectangle has sharp straight edges.  Then cut the block in 2 separate pieces, measuring 1 1/2 inches wide by 10 inches long.  Place one piece of dough so the 10 inch length is running left to right on a flat surface. Then slice the dough vertically into 1/2 inch wide pieces.  Repeat the process with the other piece of dough.

Place each square of dough 1 inch apart on the baking sheet.  Bake for 10-12 minutes or until done.  When done, cookies will be firm and lightly browned on the bottom.  As you can see by the above picture, these cookies do not brown on the top or the edges.  Remove cookies from baking sheet and transfer to a rack to cool. Cheers!
                     **LAST YEAR: Espresso Chocolate Shortbread**