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.

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.

Fiona's birthday malteser cake

I made a chocolate malteser cake for Fiona's birthday today. The recipe is from Cakes Galore by Valerie Barret. Although I have only used the book once book, I would recommend it for the photography alone. I really need to use it more often. The batter for this cake tasted so good, full of chocolatey, malty goodness.

For photography I decided to go with a red background, inspired by the red malteser bag!

The icing tasted amazing, the malty flavour definitely came through. However I found the cake itself a little bit dry.