What do you do when your favourite chocolate brand gets in touch asking if they can send you a package with the aim of creating some Father’s Day themed content? You jump at the chance of course! This is exactly the situation I was in a couple of weeks ago when Lindt dropped me a line and I immediately knew that whatever I chose to do with the chocolate would some how involved baked goods- the perfect combination of my love of creating in the kitchen and my Dad’s love of eating said creations.

The gold bear never made it as far as being smashed up for baking purposes. He was promptly snapped up by Ben but would make a lovely additional gift for your Dad. The little heart shaped tins (also a lovely gift on their own) each contained four of Lindt’s famous Lindor truffles and after some deliberation I decided to make some seriously indulgent chocolate muffins with these popped inside.

Ingredients (to make six muffins, easily doubled to make twelve):

125g plain flour
25g cocoa powder
1tsp baking powder
1 large egg
60g caster sugar
2tbsp vegetable oil
100ml milk
6 Lindor balls (why not experiment with a variety of flavours?)

The recipe I found suggested topping the muffins with buttercream but as we were midst heatwave at the time I opted for a really simple chocolate icing that was less likely to suffer from the heat. For that you will need:

110g dark chocolate finely chopped
1 tbsp golden syrup
25g softened unsalted butter

Method:

Pre-heat your oven to 160*c and pop six muffin cases in to a tin.

Sift the flour, baking powder and cocoa in to a large bowl and set to one side.

In a separate jug whisk together the milk, oil, egg and sugar and pour this mixture in to the dry ingredients. Mix together until just combined- the batter should look slightly lumpy at this point and that’s fine!

Divide the mixture between the six muffin cases and pop a Lindor ball in to each one, pressing down until it’s mostly covered by the mixture.

Bake for around 20 minutes, or until the top of the muffins begin to crack.

Whilst cooling you can make your icing- melt the dark chocolate in a heatproof bowl over a pan of simmering water (make sure the bowl doesn’t touch the water). Once melted pour in the syrup and butter and mix well. Leave this to cool.

I only iced part of the muffins, just the area where the Lindor ball was showing through as these are seriously rich anyway! I then topped with chocolate stars for that added extra touch.

A buttercream icing would also work so well on these so feel free to experiment!

These were so easy to make but look (and taste) seriously impressive. I’ll definitely make these again for birthdays and other special occasions using different flavour Lindor balls to personalise them to the recipients taste!

Have you ever used Lindor balls in baking? I’d love to know what recipes you’ve tried and tested. What will you be making your Dad this year?