Camel unit testing with MockEndPointsandSkip

Am a Camel newbie and am trying out some code to understand how the MockEndpoints functionality works, but it is not working. Here are my Camel routes that I want to unit test using MockEndpoints. The property values are defined in the application.properties file.

from("kafka:{{kafka.servers}}?topic={{kafka.consumer.topic}}&groupId={{kafka.consumer.groupId}}")
    .to("direct:notify");

from("direct:notify")
    .log("direct:notfy");

Here is my Test code which is failing the assertion of receiving 1 Exchange. It appears that the Producer is never sending the message to my Kafka Mockendpoint:

@RunWith(SpringRunner.class)
@SpringBootTest
@MockEndpointsAndSkip("kafka:{{kafka.servers}}?*|direct:notify")
public class NotificationApplicationTests {     

    @Autowired
    private CamelContext context;

    @Value("${kafka.servers}")
    private String kafkaServers;

    @EndpointInject(uri="mock:kafka:{{kafka.servers}}")
    private MockEndpoint mockKafka;

    @EndpointInject(uri="mock:direct:notify")
    private MockEndpoint mockDirect;

    @Autowired
    private ProducerTemplate notiProducer;

    @Test
    public void testMockEndpoints() throws Exception{                                       

        mockDirect.setExpectedMessageCount(1);
        mockDirect.whenAnyExchangeReceived( (Exchange exchange) -> {
            //NEVER GETS HERE!!
            log.info("MOCK DIRECT exchange received");          
        });     

        String payload = "{'email': 'test@gmail.com', 'data': 'ABC1234'}";

        notiProducer.sendBody(mockKafka, payload);

        mockDirect.assertIsSatisfied();

    }

}