malteser cake
Why hello sexy cake! I <3 anything malt - Ovaltines, Milo, Horlicks and most definitely Maltesers and when I saw this Nigella Lawson malteser cake here I knew I had to make it. All dolled up and ready to hit the town this cake may look fabulous but unfortunately the time and amount of stuff I had to wash just did not measure up when trying the final product. I mean, it was tasty and all but I would have liked more of a malt taste and um less washing haha
Ingredients: 150g soft brown sugar
100g caster sugar
3 large eggs
175ml milk
15g unsalted butter
2 tablespoons Horlicks powder (or ovaltine)
175g plain flour
25g cocoa
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
Preheat the oven to 170C Whisk together the caster sugar, brown sugar and eggs until light and frothy.
Heat the milk, butter and Horlicks powder in a small saucepan until the butter has melted and the mixture is hot but not boiling. See the amount of Horlicks there? Yeah I kinda misread the recipe and somehow managed to double the amount haha it was a bit hard to dissolve so much powder but I’m glad I did because the cake didn’t have that much of a malt taste even with the doubling of Horlicks.
Beat the milk mixture into the egg mixture a little at a time.
Sift in the dry ingredients and fold thoroughly. Split mixture into 2 sandwich cake tins and bake for 25 minutes, by which time the cakes should have risen and will spring back when pressed gently. (I found there wasn’t enough mixture for 2 tins and that it didn’t rise too much. Maybe double the recipe if you’re planning a super awesome high cake?)
I made a circle cake but also wanted to play with my heart cake tin
Time for da icing! Sift 250g icing sugar, 1 tsp cocoa, 45g Horlicks and beat with
125g soft unsalted butter until smooth. Add 2 Tbsp boiling water to the mixture if it’s not smooth and spreadable. Cut the cake in half and ice the middle, sandwich them back together and ice all around. If you plan on putting Maltesers on the side of your cake make sure the icing is thick enough so the Maltesers don’t fall off.
Mmm Malteser time! So I thought my cake would look awesome with Maltesers chopped in half but erm watch your fingers when chopping em! Once you’ve chopped a whole bunch of Maltesers go nuts and stick them onto the cake.
So the heart shape was probably not the best idea after I covered the sides with Maltesers halves lol think I went a little overboard…
Woohoo layer upon layer of Maltesers
The Malteser halves go soggy after about a day so try (!) and eat the cake on the same day or decorate it on the day. Not too happy about the recipe I reckon I’d try making a normal chocolate sponge cake and substitute the cocoa powder with Horlicks next time.
