Malteaser Cake

Cakes are great at any time of the year, but no more so than on a birthday. I wanted to make a bit of a showstopper cake for one of my best friends and fellow Queen of Tarts blogger, Katherine. We are both keen watchers of Lorraine Pascale's cookery programmes and we were both drooling at the thought of this cake as soon as we saw it. Not only is it a chocolate cake, but it is covered in Malteasers, what is there not to like? After buying what felt like hundreds of Malteasers I was ready to give it a go ...

The recipe for the cake is pretty easy to follow and I was excited to use my newly returned KMix electric whisk (a Christmas present from last year that I have only just had fixed and returned to me). The mixer made quick work of the ingredients and I poured the mixture in to 2 round sandwich tins and put them in the oven.

Once the cakes had cooked, I left them to cool completely and put them to one side whilst I made the chocolate buttercream frosting. The frosting was basically softened butter, melted chocolate and icing sugar. The most difficult thing about making the frosting was that it only needed 100g of melted chocolate and that the Bourneville bar i had bought was 200g, but it is encouraged that you should try your recipe along the way ...

I used about 1/3 of the frosting to sandwich the 2 cakes together and then used the remaining frosting to cover the cake completely, with the assistance of a palette knife to try and keep it neat. It was important to keep a reasonably thick layer of frosting around the cake to allow the malteasers to stick.

      

Next came the most tricky part of the cake, placing all of the malteasers on. Lorraine suggests going up the side of the cake, over the top and then back down the other side, so this was how I started off. I was tempted at one point to throw the whole cake on the floor in frustration, but I had to admit defeat on getting perfectly straight lines. It does take a lot of patience and time to cover the cake, but I think the end result is worth the effort.

Katherine had organised an afternoon tea for her birthday and so I took the cake along as a surprise bake. Although slightly bashed in the 2 hour car journey, the cake had stayed pretty much in one piece and it had the desired effect of being a slightly over the top, but 'show off' cake!

I would definitely recommend for people to make this and it really does look impressive when finished and tastes just as good.