Chocolate Dinosaur Cakelets

I got a new pan for Christmas, and needed to try it out. My mom helped me make some mini chocolate dinosaurs.

 

Ingredients:

• 250 gram flour (use 281 gr flour for vanilla, no cocoa powder or instant coffee)
  
• 1/4 cup cocoa powder
• 1/2 teaspoon instant coffee granules
• 1 2/3 cups sugar
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 3/4 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 cup butter, softened
• 1 cup vanilla yogurt (I used a scant cup of cottage cheese, with a spash of milk, whirred smooth in food processor)
• 4 eggs
• 2 tsp vanilla extract

 

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 350°F.
2. Spray Dinosaur Cakelet Pan with baking spray containing flour. (Or use cooking spray and dust with 1 tablespoon flour mixed with 1/2 teaspoon cocoa)
   
3. In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt.
4. In a large stand mixer bowl, use paddle attachment to mix together butter, yogurt (or cottage cheese), eggs and vanilla.
5. Add flour mixture gradually, 1/2 cup or so at a time and mix on medium speed for 1 minute.
6. Spoon batter into each cavity, filling 1/2 full.
   (I used a scant 1/4 cup, or 1 large cookie scoop and maybe 1/2 small cookie scoop per well.)
   
7. Bake for 18-20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in dino comes out clean.
8. Remove from oven and cool cakes in pan for 15 minutes.
9. Invert cakes onto cooling rack to cool completely.
10. Wash pan and repeat with remaining batter. Decorate as desired.

 

Carole's Notes:

We liked this! The cake is tasty!

On the first batch, I found it hard to get the dinosaurs out of the pan - but I just used cooking spray and only cooked for 17 minutes.. Second batch, I used some flour dusting after the cooking spray, and cooked for 20 minutes. They popped out fine. (Maybe my toothpick was still a bit wet on the first ones.) For the last batch, I mixed 1/2 teaspoon of cocoa with 1 tablespoon of flour, and used that to dust the pan. They came out as well. I think I will use the pans with a firmer batter next time - such as brownie batter.

But I will re-use the cake recipe for a cake.

The recipe is lightly adapted from https://www.nordicware.com/recipes/vanilla-dinosaur-cakelets/