Little Irish Oatmeal Cakes

When I was just getting into baking, I decided to make my Mom a Birthday cake.  I still had a lot to learn about baking a cake, but I thought I could pull it off.  My Mom decided on an Irish oatmeal cake.  It was a layer cake with maple caramel frosting, and it sounded delicious!  Being the newbie baker that I was however, I didn't grease and flour the pan, and I didn't line the bottom with parchment.  To make matters worse, when I tried to turn out the cake, the middle was a little underdone.  The cake was basically a falling apart mess on the plate, very sad looking, but we couldn't help but laugh at it.  It was in no shape to be sliced into layers, but we made the frosting anyhow, globbed it on top, and took scoops of the pile of cake.  It tasted delicious thank goodness, but it wouldn't win any beauty contests that is for sure! 

I have since made no attempt to make an oatmeal cake, but I got the idea in my head on Friday that it sounded delicious!  Although I am confident in my layer cake baking and assembly at this point, I decided to make little mini cakes this time. 

I had just recieved a mini bunt muffin pan from my Dad as a gift, and I was itching to bake something in it.  So I came up with a vegan version of delicious Irish oatmeal cake.  This time I stirred in dried currants, because it just seemed to fit with the oatmeal and the Irish theme.  I only had one pan, so I baked some mini cakes in the bundt muffin pan, and used the extra batter to make myself a little cake to enjoy in my little 4 inch cake pan. 

The cakes smelled wonderfully as they baked up, like a cinnamon oatmeal maple cookie!  They didn't take long to bake at all, only 15 minutes, being so small.  I didn't let them cool very long before I sampled, and before long the 30 little cakes were only 24...as if the chefs cake I had baked to sample wasn't enough.  They were wonderful! 

Lightly cinnamon maple flavored, sweet but not too much so with the little pops of currants for flavor and the oatmeal for a nice textural contrast!  I was going to give them a maple glaze, but I decided that they were so good on their own that all they needed was a little dusting of powdered sugar to make them prettier!  They were so cute, and who doesn't love a one bite sample of cake once in a while?  They were beautiful unlike my cake disaster years ago, and I am going to have to try making that oatmeal layer cake again someday...but for now I am loving these mini cakes!  Here is the recipe if you would like to experience them for yourself!

Makes cakes about 60 cakes

1 cup maple sugar or granulated sugar

1/2 cup coconut oil

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees and position rack in center of oven. Spray the wells of the mini cake pans with spray, and dust with flour, shaking out excess.  Whisk flour, oats, cinnamon, nutmeg, baking soda, sea salt, and sugar in a large bowl to blend well. Whisk oil, milk, vanilla extract, maple extract together in small bowl to blend well, then whisk into the flour mixture until well blended. Stir in currants or blueberries until well incorporated.  Whisk in lemon juice vinegar and stir quickly. Transfer cake batter to prepared pan, dropping by 2 tsp fulls into each hole, and bake cakes until tester inserted into center of a cake comes out clean, and they are lightly brown, about 10-15 minutes. Cool cakes about 5 minutes, then invert onto a parchment lined rack and let cool completely on rack (or you can cheat and let cool until edible, as they are good warm as well).  Dust with powdered sugar, and enjoy!