When we got married two years ago in the UK, we organised an afternoon tea party reception in the Village Hall immediately after the wedding. We were having a big party the next week in Brussels so we didn’t want anything too big or too complicated, so we planned to make most of the food ourselves. My mum made most of the delicious cakes and finger foods, with some of our talented family bakers contributing plates of this and that to the table, which looked so incredible delicious!
I didn’t in fact get to eat anything. Yes, I was that bride. Honestly, I tried so hard, but every time I got close to the table some well meaning person would intercept me to tell me how happy they were for me and how lovely I looked and how many blessings they wished us in our new life. Yes, how kind, but the food!!
In the end, some wonderful person (Jen? Hannah? Fancy?) handed me a piece of gingerbread through the window of the car as we drove away and I munched happily on it as we drove off up the A40 and marveled that we were, in fact, married.
Well I may not have got to eat much, but Rasmus has frequently spoken of the malteser cake he had. I swear this cake had reached legendary proportions. I discovered that it was my cousin Allie who was responsible for said malteser cake and she promptly emailed me the link to the recipe.
I guess I am not quite such a good housewife because it has taken me a whole two years to make it for my dear husband. My sister in law had asked me to bake something for the baptism at the weekend, which I was very happy to. “What do you think I should make?” was the innocent question which got a fast and confident “Malteser cake” in reply. Malteser cake it was.
The recipe comes from a blog called Ruth’s Kitchen Experiments. It seems she’s a lass from Northern Ireland who also posts such heart-attack inducing concoctions as the mars bar rice krispie treats on her website. Sadly, she doesn’t seem to be blogging any more but the recipe was happily still there.
Ruth calls them “malteser buns” but buns in my mind are sweet bread-like things. Cake is not a good description either. These are neither cakey nor bunish. What they are is very bad for you. Since the ingredients consist of chocolate, butter, maltesers, biscuits and not a lot else, this will not come as a huge surprise.
But they are still very very good and if you cut them in small little squares you can excuse the naughtiness of them. And then take a second…
Malteser Buns/Cake/Traybake
Recipe from Ruth’s Kitchen Experiments
What you need:
400g milk chocolate
200g unsalted butter
4 tbsp golden syrup
250g digestive biscuits
175g maltesers
250g white chocolate
50g unsalted butter
1 tbsp golden syrup
75g maltesers, crushedWhat you do:
1. Blend the digestive biscuits to make fine crumbs (Fiona: or bang ’em with a rolling pin)
2. Set up a double boiler and melt together the milk chocolate, 200g butter and 4 tbsp golden syrup.
3. Mix in the crushed biscuit and maltesers and stir well.
4. Spread out the mixture in a swiss roll pan and compact the mixture in the pan. (It can be helpful to place this in the fridge until you have your topping ready)
5. Set up the double boiler again. Melt together the white chocolate, 50g butter and 1 tbsp golden syrup. (Fiona: Melting white chocolate is HARD. Seriously, it only went well for me the THIRD time. May you have much better kitchen luck)
6. Pour the white chocolate over the top of the compacted biscuit mix and spread evenly.
7. Pour on the crushed maltesers and spread over the top pushing gently into the melted chocolate.
8. Leave to firm up in the fridge for a couple of hours then slice into portions.
