Happy Mother's Day! Raspberry Laced Chocolate Mini Cakes and Almond Butter Cream

Yesterday was Mother's Day! It was my 3rd mother's day and it was a fantastic one! John and Charlotte surprised me with beautiful flowers and some awesome new baking tools! I've been eyeing up this mini cake pan for a while and was super excited to see that John had gotten it for me. He also got me a set of piping tips, new bags, 2 off-set spatulas (which I wanted so bad) and a new silicone cake pan. I don't even wanna talk about how pathetic my round cake pan is. It's beyond old and just bent and awful. I definitely needed this new one.  We got up and made breakfast, read the paper and just relaxed for a bit then decided to head out for a while. John and I always have some random thing that we are into for the moment. Right now, it's treasure hunting. I'm not kidding. John bought a metal detector- the kind you see people on the beach with, and we are determined to find something worth millions. We asked Charlotte if she'd like to treasure hunt and she was so effing excited it was hilarious. She really likes pirates and treasure- Thanks dora the explorer! So this was a ton of fun for her. She packed up her back pack with snacks, and then got a little bucket, her garden shovel and garden gloves. She was set to go. So we took her over to the farm so she could run and explore while John and I worked on finding our jackpot! It was a gorgeous day. We didn't find anything great but it was still fun! Hearing Charlotte shout "what'd you find POPPA!?" every time she heard the beep go off, was too funny!

Then we got home, all took naps and then had a little BBQ, just us 3. It was a perfect day. However, I never ended up getting to use my new presents. Today I got up and got started. Here is the thing- I am no professional when it comes to baking and I really didn't know what I was doing. I had no clue how to ice these shaped mini cakes so they came out not looking good at all but I'll learn eventually. Here is what the looked like when they came out:

Cute right?! The cake is delicious, I actually made 10 of them, that's how much my batter made. Here is what I did:
1 1/2 sticks softened butter
1 3/4 cups sugar
5 egg whites
1 1/2 tsp almond extract
3/4 cups dark cocoa powder
1 ounce of melted unsweetened chocolate, melted with 1 tbsp butter
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp baking powder
2 cups AP flour
1 1/2 cups milk
3/4 cups raspberry jam
I beat everything together and then filled my cake pan- I baked them at 350 for 24 minutes. 
I really wanted the raspberry flavor to come through, so I piped about 1 tsp of the raspberry jam into the cakes once they were cooled. 


For the icing, I wish I had raspberry extract but I didn't at the moment so I went with Almond Butter cream. 
1/2 stick butter
1/2 cup vegetable shortening
1 1/2 tsp almond extract
2 1/2 cups powdered sugar

Like I said- they didn't come out like I wanted as far as the icing went- But they tasted amazing!!! Raspberry and chocolate are so good together and the chocolate is so rich in these. I can't wait to actually learn how to decorate these mini cakes correctly so you can see how pretty the really are but for now we are just gonna have to take taste over looks!