Monday 12 October 2009

Malteser Cake

Just three days after making the Honey Bee Cake, it's now my middle son's birthday, and he has chosen the Malteser Cake from Feast.

This one takes a little more concentration because you can't just put all the ingredients in the processor. Eggs and sugar are beaten together in a bowl; milk, butter and Horlicks are heated in a pan, and flour, cocoa, baking powder and bicarb are mixed together in another bowl.


Then the hot milk mixture is beaten into the egg mixture, and the flour mixture is folded in at the end. The runny mixture is divided between two 20 cm baking tins, and cooked for 25 mins at 170 C.

I think my sponges didn't quite rise as well as they should, and they were bubbly-looking on the surface. Something didn't quite go right here, but I tested a tiny bit and it tasted fine.

The buttercream is made by beating up icing sugar, butter, Horlicks and cocoa and then you sandwich the sponges together with half the buttercream and then spread the rest on the top.

(Or you get Birthday Boy to do this bit for you, and also ask him to decorate the cake with Maltesers while he's there.)

This cake tastes just like a giant Malteser!

It turned out very well, even with my strange-looking sponges. I can imagine this cake becoming a birthday regular.

Ingredients:
Cake:
150 g soft brown sugar
100 g caster sugar
3 eggs
175 ml milk
15 g butter
2 tbsp Horlicks
175 g plain flour
25 g cocoa, sieved
1 tbsp baking powder, 1/2 tsp bicarb

Icing and decoration:
250 g icing sugar (sieved or make icing in food processor)
1 tsp cocoa
45 g Horlicks
125 g soft unsalted butter
2 tbsp boiling water
around 80 g Maltesers (I bought a big pack)

3 comments:

Coby said...

This is a regular birthday cake in our family too Arista:) We always buy a family pack of Maltesers as when our kidlets take to decorating, every other malty ball disappears into someone's gob! Glad you enjoyed, could it have been a little too much raising agent causing the bubbling? Obviously it can't have been too bad whatever went 'wrong' as they look fab to me!:)

George@CulinaryTravels said...

This has got to be one of my favourite Nigella cakes. It looks so good.

Cynthia said...

It is no secret that I do not like chocolate but get this - a friend of mine (British born) raved to me about maltesers and introduced me to them when we went shopping one day at one of those fancy gourmet stores over here in Barbados. I took one malteser and completely fell in love with it. I think that maybe it is a good thing that it is not regularly available :)

So just looking at your cakes makes me wish that I can pick the maltesers :)