malted chocolate chip biscuits

I was going to write "cookies" but just couldn't bring myself to do it. To me, these are biscuits.

Regardless of what you want to call these, they are utterly delicious. The malt flavour really comes through and tastes fantastic with the milk chocolate chunks. It's like Malteser chocolates but in biscuit form. 

Go and bake them. NOW.

Malted chocolate chip biscuits
Recipe slightly altered from Choclette at Tin & Thyme, altered from Ruby Tandoh at the Guardian.

150g butter, softened (I use slightly salted)

100g golden caster sugar

1 egg, large

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

225g plain flour

1 1/2 stp baking powder

90g horlicks (or equivalent malted drink powder)

100g milk chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 180C/160C Fan/Gas 4. Cream together the butter and sugar. Mix in the horlicks powder and vanilla extract, followed by the egg. In a separate bowl combine the flour and baking powder then add to the other bowl. Mix into a dough. Stir in the chocolate chips.

Roll the dough into walnut sized balls and flatten slightly. I got 20 from my mixture although admittedly I did eat bits of dough... If the mixture is really soft then put in the fridge to firm up a bit, about 20 minutes. Place on baking trays spacing well apart to allow for spreading in the oven.

Bake for approx. 12 minutes until lightly golden around the edges. Allow to firm up slightly on the tray for a minute before transferring to a wire rack to finish cooling.

chocolate malteser cake

Ok, so what twit suddenly decided to start calling (Victoria) sponge sandwich cakes "naked cakes"? Did I miss something in a blog post one day? 

I'm sorry, I don't get it. Be gone with your daft, trendy, food lingo. Here I present to you a chocolate cake with chocolate malt butter icing and a lot of maltesers. I don't need to call it "naked" to make it sound and look more exciting or glamorous, I think the dense malteser topping is doing that for me!

I baked this dinky 6 inch round cake for my friend's 30th birthday on Monday. He likes chocolate and I'm still slightly obsessed with malt chocolate icing so I combined the two. My icing turned out completely different this time. It was darker in colour and more fudgey, not at all moussey like the batch from a few weeks ago. I must have weighed something incorrectly as I was throwing it together quickly. It was still incredibly tasty, just different.  

The birthday boy was definitely delighted with his chocolate cake. The crunchy maltesers were a lovely accompaniment to the soft, fluffy sponge and fudgey icing.

Chocolate malteser cake

chocolate sponges:

6oz/ 170g margarine/ butter

6oz/ 170g soft light brown sugar

3 large eggs

5oz/ 140g self raising flour

1oz/ 30g cocoa powder

2 tablespoons of milk

malt chocolate icing:

125g softened butter

200g icing sugar

50g horlicks/ovaltine malt powder

25g cocoa powder

2 tablespoons of boiling water

A bag of maltesers for decoration

Preheat the oven to 180C/160 Fan/Gas 4. Grease and line two 6 inch round cake tins with greaseproof paper. Beat together the margarine and sugar for about 5 minutes until light and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well between each addition. Add a tablespoon of the flour mixture with the last egg to stop the cake mixture from curdling. Tip in the remaining flour with the cocoa and milk and mix until everything is fully combined. 

Divide the mixture between the two tins (they will be quite full!) and bake in the centre of the oven for about 30 minutes until the cakes are well risen, firm to touch and a skewer inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean. Leave to cool in the tins for a few minutes before turning out onto a wire rack to finish cooling. 

For the icing, beat together the butter and icing sugar for about 5 minutes until light and fluffy. Mix the horlicks, cocoa and water into a thick paste and beat into the icing sugar mixture. Mix well and use the icing to generously fill and top the cake. Decorate the cake with a pile of maltesers for full on chocolate malt indulgence.

banana cupcakes with malted chocolate icing

I have made so many banana bakes over the last few weeks it's getting ridiculous. Bananas appear to brown at the speed of light around here. I wasn't going to bother blogging these as I used the same recipe as this loaf cake I posted not long ago, but I felt the need to rave about the malted chocolate butter icing. It's that good!

The icing is so silky soft it's almost mousse like in texture. It just melts in your mouth, wrapping around a soft, sweet banana crumb. Banana and chocolate is an excellent combination but banana and malted chocolate is even better. I honestly cannot rave about it enough.

I came across the icing on Laura's blog, I'd Much Rather Bake Than..., last week and immediately bookmarked her post. As you can see the icing pipes beautiful soft swirls. I imagine it would be very satisfying to cover a full cake too. Next time I'll need to pair it up with chocolate cake for full on swirling and indulgence.

On a separate note, do you like my new cake plate? It's a Royal Winton Grimwades piece, my "ultimate" china brand, and I couldn't contain my excitement when I found it in a second hand shop a few weeks ago after visiting the dentist. I told the cashier I was rewarding myself for not needing any fillings.

Has anybody else had good luck in second hand shops recently? I've found some brilliant pieces in the last couple of weeks and I'm looking forward to organising a blog post about them soon.

chocolate malt marble bundt

It was my Mum's birthday at the weekend so naturally she deserved a beauty of a cake. I have to admit I think I did pretty well this year.

After seeing a malted chocolate bundt cake on Chocolate Log Blog a few weeks ago I immediately bookmarked it with Mum's birthday in mind. She loves chocolate, Horlicks, maltesers and bundts so it was a match made in heaven.

The only substitutions I made were plain flour instead of half plain/half wholemeal spelt flour and golden syrup instead of mesquite powder. I also veered off track with the icing glaze. I had milk chocolate instead of dark chocolate so I was unsure about using Choclette's method of melted sugar in case it ended up being overly sweet. Instead I followed a similar icing in my Mary Berry book which adds icing sugar at the end, thinking it would be easier to adjust the sweetness. However when I tasted the icing it just tasted really water-y, not particularly appetising. 

At this point I went freestyle and chucked in extra chocolate, butter and icing sugar and sifted in some cocoa powder which boosted the chocolate flavour and deepened the colour. This resulted in a slightly fudgier runny icing, definitely preferable to what I started out with. It looked lovely and glossy poured over the cake too.

I slightly over cooked my bundt at the crust/the top when it's in the oven (9 months later and I still forget this oven cooks things quicker) but the ground almonds and yoghurt in the batter kept the cake moist. As you can see there were satisfying puddles of icing around the edge of cake stand which were perfect for adding to any dry bits. Or just scooping up to eat from a teaspoon!

It's always exciting cutting into a marble cake to reveal what pattern lurk inside. It's such a simple yet striking effect. Chocolate and malt is a winning flavour combination too. The malt flavour definitely comes through in the pale mixture which elevates it beyond your standard chocolate and vanilla marble sponge. I highly recommend this cake if you want something easy and tasty to bake yet stunning to look at. Cheers for the recipe Choclette!

On a side note, are people finding my main text difficult to read at the moment? I've always used Courier as my blog font and have never had any issues with it, but it started looking patchy and faint last week on my laptop. It doesn't look any different on my work desktop computer though. Weird.