Individual serving, melt-in-your-mouth chocolate cakes. A fantastic, healthier alternative to the boxed chocolate candies typically given away on Valentine’s Day.
If you’re scrambling to come up with something unique to give your loved ones on Valentine’s Day then look no further! Instead of a box of chocolates (booooring), how about baking up a batch of these Mini Chocolate Avocado Oil Valentine Cakes with Raspberry Chia Filling? These scrumptious little cakes are gluten-free, dairy-free, grain-free, paleo friendly, and contain no refined sugar, so they’re great for health-conscious individuals and those with gluten and dairy allergies.
Mini Chocolate Avocado Oil Valentine Cakes are filled with a delicious, homemade raspberry chia jam. You might be tempted to skip making the jam and substitute store-bought jam or jelly instead as a shortcut, but the jam literally takes less than two minutes to prep and has the perfect balance of sweet and tart to complement the chocolate cake. The only caveat is that you must make it in advance. After the chia seeds are combined with the other ingredients, and heated, the mixture needs to sit in the refrigerator for at least several hours (preferably overnight). As it cools, the chia seeds slowly expand and miraculously turn the raspberries into jam. If you haven’t used chia seeds to make jam before, you will be amazed.
I used small heart-shaped tart pans to make Mini Chocolate Avocado Oil Valentine Cakes but I recognize that not many people own these so I also baked up a batch using a standard 12-cup muffin tin and you can see (pictured above) that they turned out just as beautiful as the heart-shaped cakes.
Mini Chocolate Avocado Oil Valentine Cakes are a fantastic alternative to the boxed chocolate candies typically given away on Valentine’s Day. A home-baked gift is so much more special and, in this case, healthier too. Happy Valentine’s Day!
- Olive oil cooking spray
- 3 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
- ¼ cup boiling water
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- ¾ cup almond flour
- ½ cup coconut sugar
- ¼ teaspoon baking soda
- Pinch of salt
- ⅓ cup avocado oil
- 2 small eggs
- Raspberry Chia Jam (recipe in Notes)
- Preheat oven to 325 degrees F. and spray 12 heart-shaped mini cake/tart pans with olive oil cooking spray. Alternatively, line a standard 12-cup muffin pan with cupcake liners.
- Put the cocoa powder into a small bowl and whisk in the boiling water until the mixture is smooth. Stir in the vanilla extract and set aside to cool.
- Whisk together the almond flour, coconut sugar, baking soda, and salt in a large bowl. Add the avocado oil, eggs, and cocoa mixture, and stir until the mixture is completely smooth. Divide the batter evenly between the mini cake pans/cupcake liners. (Each pan/cupcake liner should have about 1 ounce of batter and should only be filled about halfway.)
- Bake on the bottom rack of the oven for 22 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center of the cakes comes out clean.
- Let the cakes cool on a wire rack for at least an hour before removing them from the pans/peeling off the cupcake liners.
- Split the cakes in half and, using a small heart-shaped cookie cutter (measuring about 1 inch in length), stamp a heart shape out of the center of each cake top.
- Dollop a small amount of Raspberry Chia Jam in the center of each cake bottom and cover with the cake top.
RASPBERRY CHIA JAM
5½ ounces frozen raspberries (no sugar added), about 1½ cups
1 tablespoon chia seeds
1 tablespoon maple syrup
Place the raspberries in a small glass bowl and microwave on high for 1 minute.
Using the tines of a fork, mash up the raspberries until all the berries are broken apart into very small pieces and the mixture is quite liquid-y. Add the maple syrup, and chia seeds and stir well.
Put the jam in the refrigerator for at least several hours, but preferably overnight, to thicken.
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