Chocolate mini bites with a chili kick

Friday was a big day for me, my last day after working in the same place for nearly nine and a half years! As is tradition when somebody arrives or leaves we had a big communal coffee morning, known locally as a Beano.

This isn’t the place to describe the perfectly chosen flowers, photos and other gifts I was given, the lovely speech (though Stuart did you really need to bring up the rugby tackling incident?), or the sniffing on my part. But I would like to say a big Thank You again to everybody involved in giving me such a fantastic send off – you know who you are! Anyway, enough of the sentimental stuff now, if you are reading this blog you probably want me to shut up and get to the food part.

My offerings for the occasion were some Chocolate and Chili bites. These went very quickly and a few people asked for the recipe so I’m guessing they were a hit; you can find the original recipe for them on the Chocolate and Zucchini web site. These are very rich (more akin to a brownie rather than a muffin) and very tasty. I’d love to tell you all about how good for you they are with their antioxidant-rich dark chocolate but given their other major ingredients (lots and lots of butter and sugar) it would be terribly unethical of me to encourage their regular consumption on health grounds. What I will say is that these are suitably small so as not to make you feel too guilty, and that a little of what you fancy does you good.

If you do try making these yourself you will need to have a play about with the chili quantities. I put in two teaspoons of mild chili powder which was very subtle (probably just as well as I didn’t have time to make sign to say what was in them). Next time I make them I’ll try chopped fresh red chili for a stronger, less savoury taste. Clotilde’s original recipe used a petit-four silicon mold but if you want dainty doughnut shapes like mine I used a mini donut/doughnut pan from Lakeland (I’m not sure if they still have them but they often get things back in stock so it is worth checking, or if not you can also get them from amazon in the US). There’s no need to buy special equipment – you could make bigger ones in a conventional cake tray of the sort you would use to make fairy cakes (or cupcakes), but bear in mind that they will be very rich.