Delicious and easy to make, this festive looking gluten-free Christmas dessert is perfect to bring to holiday parties and potlucks. Mini gluten-free chocolate bundt cakes are topped with my favorite shiny fudge frosting and sprinkled with peppermint crunch for a holiday touch!
This past weekend we were invited to an ugly sweater party. Surprisingly, this was the first ugly sweater party that my husband and I have ever been to. I shared our outfits on Instagram if you’d like to take a peek.
Last year I took my gluten-free mini chocolate bundt cakes with mint frosting to a holiday party. Those were really yummy and well-liked, but I admit that if you can’t find chocolate curls, those do take a bit of time to make. This weekend I was looking for something a little less minty, and with a candy cane look.
Now I’ve tried topping cakes with crushed candy canes before, but the texture just bothered me. I had stumbled upon these Andes Peppermint Crunch Baking Chips at my local store and thought they might be perfect – and they were! Despite the name, they aren’t really crunchy – only slightly more than an average chocolate chip texture. I think these are perfectly peppermint flavored and go so well with the chocolate cake and fudge frosting.
I have loved the mini bundt pan that I purchased last year. I just think mini bundt cakes are a pretty alternative to big slices of cake or cupcakes. I found that filling my bundt cake cavities about 2/3 full of batter was ideal.
When I filled too full, the cakes rose above the level of the pan, which meant that the finished cakes were on wobbly bottoms once they were flipped over. Filling too little meant smaller cakes. You might want to bake a couple test mini cakes first to get a feel for how much batter to use.
Two things I realized after baking these: 1) I need to buy a second pan so that the baking process goes faster. 2) If you are re-using the pan, spray it with cooking oil really well in between batches or the second batch of cakes won’t come out in tact.
Notes on Ingredients for these gluten-free Christmas mint cakes:
- Andes Peppermint Crunch Baking Chips clearly state right on the bag that they are produced in a facility that does not use peanuts, tree nuts, eggs, or gluten. These do contain milk, so not suitable if you need to be dairy-free.
- I like to use part Hershey’s Special Dark Cocoa and part regular cocoa in both the cake and the fudge frosting. I adds that deep dark color to them both. In the recipe below I note that, but you are welcome to just add the amounts together and use all regular baking cocoa instead of any dark.
- Since I was taking this to a party, I wanted to be aware of nut allergies, so I chose to use gfJules flour. It is one of my go-to blends that I highly recommend. It does contain xanthan gum already, so if you use a different good quality flour blend, you’ll want to check if it contains xanthan, and if not add xanthan or guar gum for a binder in the recipe as I’ve specified below.
These took only a couple hours from start to finish and were a hit at the party I took them to. Let me know if you try them too!
Mini gluten-free chocolate cakes with chocolate and peppermint make a fun gluten-free Christmas dessert! *In my opinion, a good quality all-purpose flour blend does not contain bean flours and is not primarily rice flour. I tested this with gfJules and also recommend, Gluten Free Mama's Almond Blend, Cup4Cup, and Pamela's.Gluten-free Chocolate Peppermint Mini Bundt Cakes
Ingredients
Chocolate mini-cakes:
Fudge Frosting:
Instructions
Cakes:
Frosting:
Notes
*If you don't care about the chocolate cakes and frosting appearing extra dark, you can use regular baking cocoa everywhere it is called for in the recipes.
jules
Saturday 26th of December 2015
I bet you were the hit of the party with these, Michelle! WOW! They look amazing! And how thoughtful that you not only brought gluten-free, but nut-free goodies to share. That's the Christmas spirit! ;-) ~jules