Week 7 – Well, just…

Chocolate Malt Cake

This week I wanted to combine my blog post with making my mother’s birthday cake, which was on Friday, but wasn’t required until Saturday, and I am writing/publishing on Sunday night.  Eeshk.  Anyway, luckily Home Sweet Home has a cakes section, and has a few pretty impressive looking celebration cakes.  My sister and I decided on the Chocolate Malt Cake, as it looked impressive, and my fussy-eater sister had no qualms about the ingredients.  This is a multi-step, multi-page recipe (even the ingredients go over the page!) and I only really had 3 hours to make it in.  The 3 main stages are making the fudge sauce, making the sponge, and making the frosting.  Three hours sounds like a lot, but it did mean I had to make sure I stuck to half hour segments – 30 minutes to make the fudge sauce, 30 minutes to make the sponge, 35 minutes for the cake to cook, 30 minutes to let the cake cool and prepare the frosting, 30 minutes to assemble.  This regiment meant there was less time wasted, but maybe things were a bit rushed…

The Bake

I have used all the correct ingredients this time, which resulted in quite a pricey supermarket shop actually.  However as I only have two sandwich tins, I couldn’t make it a three layered cake without having to wait for one tin to cook first, so I only used two thirds of the ingredients required – i.e if it said 120g, I used 80g, et cetera, et cetera. 

The first step was to make the chocolate fudge icing, which would be poured over the sponges.  This seemed like the most complicated part, and the bit that was most likely to go wrong, as it involved heating golden syrup, caster sugar and double cream in a saucepan, and letting it come to the boil, before adding it to a bowl of chocolate and cocoa powder.  I’m always apprehensive when things have to be heated this way, as there’s such a fine line between under heating and burning.  However, I think I got it right, as when adding the heated mixture to the dry ingredients, after a while it turned into a nice fudge sauce:

While the fudge mixture cooled, it was on to the sponge.  This was essentially a chocolate sponge mix, but with buttermilk – simple enough, and went into the oven and came out without problem.  After cooking for approximately 35 minutes, I allowed the cakes to cool a bit, and then poured the fudge sauce over both, before allowing to cool completely.

While they cooled, I made the frosting.  Now, whereas with the fudge sauce and sponge I used a third less than required, ingredients-wise, for the frosting I used half what was required.  I know from past experience with Hummingbird recipes that there’s always way too much icing, and as I was also using one less layer, I took my chances.  The recipe in the book called for 900 grams of icing sugar!  And even 450g seemed a lot.  When making the frosting, I was first to cream the icing sugar and butter, before adding a little cream cheese to loosen the mixture, before adding the remainder.  However, as my mixing bowl is quite shallow, and there was so much icing sugar, it wasn’t really incorporating the butter, so I added the cream cheese and then started mixing properly.  It then took on an icing consistency, yay.  It’s at this point that the ‘malt’ part of the cake’s title comes into play, as in a separate bowl you mix double cream with…malt powder!  Once it’s a thick mixture you fold it into the buttercream, and voilà, malt icing!  By now the sponges were cooled, buttercream frosting was ready, so time for assembly.

It was at the assembly point that I started to become a bit unstuck.  The sponges seemed cool, and the fudge sauce seemed to have set, but when I spread some frosting onto the first layer, it seemed to push the fudge sauce to the sides, and that and the frosting started oozing over the edges.  I heaped some crushed Maltesers onto the frosting, before approaching the upper layer.  I was afraid the same would happen with the top layer, so I put the top layer onto the bottom layer fudge sauce side down.  I think this might have worsened the oozing situation between the layers, but it did stop the fudge sauce and frosting mixing together on top and thus ruining the look of the cake.  I heaped the frosting on top, spread it along the edges, sprinkled the rest of the crushed Maltesers on top, and added a border of whole Maltesers.  I also tidied up the edges, which by now had quite a pool of frosting/fudge sauce.

In hindsight, maybe I should’ve let the sponges cool for a little longer, or even refrigerate them for a bit to allow the sauce to set.  However, to be honest, truly in hindsight, I don’t think I would add the fudge sauce at all.  It doesn’t really add to the taste, but did affect the overall aesthetic and effort required.  The cake did still look really impressive once completed, and talking of taste, it tastes great!  Although it is really rich, so have small slices!  It’s the frosting that really gives it the malt-ness, and makes you think ‘ooh this cake tastes like a Malteser!’  The sponge is moist, and the fudge sauce does lend a smoothness, although as already mentioned, I feel the cake would work just as well without it.

It’s back to being a completely random choice next week, so anticipation all around – happy baking!