rants & recipes

I've been really into "mini" or small batch baking lately. For one thing, it's perfect for tweaking recipes because if you totaly screw up, you haven't wasted much. If your results are passable, but not superb, you only have one or two servings to finish off, as opposed to a whole pie or cake. Also, it's not exactly healthy to be plowing through entire full-size cakes and pies every weekend. (Not that I couldn't do it, mind you. I just shouldn't!) Another summer time perk - if you have a toaster oven or countertop convection oven, mini things are easy to bake in these smaller ovens. I love being able to fire up our convection microwave oven to bake without heating up the kitchen as much as the regular oven would.

So far, I've amassed three mini pie pans, two mini layer cake pans and, most recently, two very cute mini bundt pans. I haven't used the layer pans yet, though I'm eyeing a chocolate rum cake recipe to break them in. The mini pie pans have been much used, for working on a vegan pecan pie recipe. And today, I just used the bundts for a chocolate chocolate chip cake recipe. I was a bit worried, given the "strechiness" of the batter and thought I'd over-used the ground flax, but the results were light, fluffy and *perfect* ... the only downside was this mini-stuff - one serving for Evin, one for me, and all the delciousness disappeared quickly!

Another potential downside to small batch baking is the need for a gram scale - much easier to figure out a sixth or a twelfth of some random recipe in grams. But if you're doing a decent amount of baking, you need, or likely already have, a gram scale, right?

There's also a question of how mini recipes will scale to their full-size counterparts? I think pies would do fine. And probably layer cakes. Not sure about bundt cakes, though. However, multiply this recipe by 6 and you'd likely have a terrific muffin recipe! (This was adapted and veganized from a muffin recipe, in fact.)

• 45 grams all-purprose flour
• 35 grams sugar
• 1 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder
• 40 grams mini chocolate chips (though I think this batter may be "sturdy" enough to support regular sized chips)
• pinch salt
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/8 tsp baking soda
• 1 tbsp ground golden flax seed
• 45 grams + 1 tbsp of water (dough was too dry with just 45 grams, so 1 tbsp added during final mix)
• 20 grams oil
• 1/4 tsp vanilla

1. Add flax to water, give it time to do its eggy imitation thing.
2. Grease two mini bundt pans.
3. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
4. Combine flour, sugar, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda and salt and most of the chips. Save some to sprinkle on top of batter.
5. Add oil and vanilla to flax-water.
6. Combine wet and dry mixes.
7. Spoon into pans.
8. Bake for 20 minutes.