It was Mothers’ Day yesterday, but we celebrated one week early with a delightful homemade afternoon tea.  This combined two of my favourite things:  eating cake, and spending time with my ma, though it seems that she doesn’t believe the last one is possible.  I like to see her every week for a catch-up, but this is made difficult by the fact that she never invites me anywhere, and indeed seems loath to actually accept my invitations either.  A typical attempt at inviting her out goes something like this:

Me:  Do you want to come to the cinema with us next weekend?

Mother:  Oh no, I couldn’t intrude.

Me:  It’s the opposite of an intrusion.  It’s an invitation.

Mother:  But you don’t want me there!

Me:  Then why am I inviting you?

Mother:  I know, but…

Me:  Right, it’s decided, you’re coming with us.  I’m booking a table for dinner afterwards as well.

Mother:  No, absolutely not.  That’s your time together, I’m not coming.

Me:  But we just invited you!  If we didn’t want you to come along, we just wouldn’t have told you!

Mother:  No.  I can come to the cinema, but not for dinner.

Is she not insane?  Despite being faced with similar conversations every time I invite her for a brew, I do manage to force into seeing me most weeks.  Perhaps it’s some ploy on her part to avoid spending time with me, and she absolutely hates our catch-ups, but I at least thoroughly enjoy them.  Especially when they involve cake, as they so often do.

This is one of the cakes I made for the afternoon tea.  The recipe comes from Vegan Finger Foods, but I picked it up in Vegan Life magazine.  As the name of the book suggests, they’re meant to be bite-size, mini-cupcakes.  Alas, I don’t have the right tin, so we made big ones and I fear I increased the baking time a bit too much as they were a wee bit dry.  They were still delicious though!  I decided to switch from light brown to coconut sugar to really enhance the flavour from the coconut oil, and it complemented the almond butter in the filling beautifully.  It might be nice to sprinkle a bit of dessicated coconut on the top as well and really emphasise the coconutiness.

Brownie Coco-Nut Butter Cups

Tweaked from Vegan Finger Foods, makes 34

Ingredients:

Nonstick cooking spray

115g dark chocolate, chopped

40g coconut oil

120g plain soy yoghurt

200g coconut sugar

1/2 tsp salt

2 tsp vanilla extract

150g plain flour

For the filling:

190g almond butter

3 tbsp icing sugar

pinch salt

60g dark chocolate, chopped

Method:

1.  Preheat the oven to 180C and lightly coat the cups of two mini-muffin tins with the cooking spray.

2.  Place the chocolate and coconut oil in a bowl and melt in the microwave, in 30-second bursts, stirring in between.  It will smell extremely tempting!

3.  In a large bowl mix together the melted chocolate with the yoghurt, sugar, salt and vanilla.

4.  Sift the flour on top and stir until it’s all combined.

5.  Fill each cup two-thirds full.

6.  Bake for 12 minutes.

7.  Leave to cool on a wire rack, creating an indent in the top with the back of a teaspoon or your finger.  When they have cooled, pop them out of the trays.

8.  To make the filling, mix together all the ingredients except the chopped chocolate.   Spoon 1 teaspoon of filling into the indent of each one.

9.  Scatter some chopped chocolate on top, and serve!