Celebratory Malteaser Cake

This is a cake to be made for a special occasion. I baked this for a friend, who recently passed her PhD.

Although the cakes themselves are not difficult to bake, the decoration requires some patience. The cakes are extremely moist, the malteaser-flavoured buttercream topping rich (but not too thick) and the sweet additions make a spectacular finish.

Makes one 13cm cake, one deep 20cm cake, and one 23cm cake

Ingredients:

For the cake:

• 325g butter or margarine,
• 325g plain chocolate (55% cocoa solids works well)
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 325g plain flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 450g light soft brown sugar
• 5 eggs
• 300ml natural yoghurt

For the frosting:

• 125g butter, softened
• 250g icing sugar
• 50g cocoa powder
• 40g sachet of Horlicks malt powder
• 2 tbsp boiling water 

To decorate:

• 120g pack of Malteasers
• 114g pack milk chocolate fingers
• 114g pack white chocolate fingers

Method:

 1. Preheat your oven to 160c/150c fan/gas mark 4. Grease and line the base of a 13cm, 23cm and deep (at least 8cm deep) 20cm cake tin.

2. Melt the butter and dark chocolate together in a medium sized saucepan over a low heat until all the butter has melted. Take off the heat, add the vanilla extract, and leave to cool.

3. Sieve the flour into a large bowl, and stir in the baking powder and bicarbonate of soda. Add the brown sugar – this tends to form clumps so use your fingers to press all theses sugar clumps into crumbs. Stir in the sugar.

Before mixing the brown sugar may be very lumpy like this. Make sure
to crumble this into a fine powder.

4. Whisk together the eggs and yoghurt, and pour into the dry ingredients. Combine fully before pouring in the chocolate/butter mixture.

After combining the yoghurt and egg, the mixture will be
fairly thick and pale

After adding the chocolate/butter, keep stirring until an even
chocolate coloured mixture is formed, like below.

5. Pour into the prepared cake tins, until they are about 2/3 full.

6. Bake the 20cm cake for around 75-90 minutes and both the 13cm and 23cm cake for 40-50 minutes, until a skewer comes out clean and the cakes are springy to the touch. This time can be variable depending on your oven, so keep an eye on the cakes whilst they are baking.

The 13cm cake, once baked

The 23cm cake, once baked

7. Take the cakes out of their tins and leave to cool completely on a wire rack.

 8. Meanwhile, make the butter cream. Cream the butter with the icing sugar, cocoa powder and Horlicks. It will be very powdery but keep going until most of the butter has been incorporated. Add 2 tbsp of freshly boiled water and stir until smooth.

       9. To decorate the cake, use a palette knife to place a small amount of buttercream around the sides and top of each cake. This is is known as the crumb layer, and prevents crumbs from reaching the surface of the cake after further covering with more buttercream. 

Adding the crumb layer - this looks messy but the cakes will look far neater
once the second layer of buttercream is added.

10. Spread the remainder of the buttercream on to the cake. Use a palette knife to spread over the top, and around the sides to get an even layer of cream around the cake.

11. Place the chocolate fingers around the sides of the 20cm cake, alternating colours between brown and white.

12. Stack the 13cm cake onto the 20cm cake. Here I left the 23cm cake to one side, but this could be added beneath the 20cm cake, creating a three-tiered cake.

13. Cut up around ¼ of the malteasers into halves. Scatter the malteasers on the cake.

Note: For the cake I baked, I melted some extra white chocolate, put the chocolate into a piping bag, and piped letters onto a sheet of greaseproof paper. I then refrigerated the sheet for a couple of minutes before placing the letters on to the cake. This gave an extra special touch to the cake that was appreciated (I hope!).


     Like this cake? Then why not try making your own Malteasers?