Yet another completely frivolous cake post

And here's the original pin...

 

 I completely blame Pinterest for this one. 

Even though mine looks a little gnarlier than the inspiration...

But there I was, pinning away as you do when I saw that picture. I showed the madre and she decided that maaaaybe that was a cake that should happen to our lives. 

So I decided that it would. 

Also when you give your little brother a fiver and ask him to go buy you malteasers and you expect him to come back with two, maybe three bags, you should revise your expectations. That resourceful child came back with five bags. I ended up using about four but STILL. Too many malteasers can be overwhelming okay. 

So to do this one, first off you gotta have a cake. Of course, I recommend chocolate cake. Specifically, Lorraine Pascale's "I Can't Believe You Made That Cake."

What you need:

Vegetable oil (to grease the tins)
200g of softened butter

200g of caster sugar

4 free range eggs

140g plain flour

60 grams of cocoa powder (I've used hot chocolate powder before for a sweeter cake)

Pinch of salt

2 teaspoons of baking powder

1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees celcius and brush your cake tin with vegetable oil.

2. Cream together the butter and the sugar until they start to go pale.

3. Add two of the eggs and half of the flour. Mix well.

4. Add the other two eggs, the rest of the flour, the cocoa powder, the salt and the baking powder. Beat until the mixture is smooth. 

5. Spoon into the prepared tin, spread it out evenly then bake in the oven for 30=40 minutes, or until you can poke a fork into the middle and it comes out clean.

6. Leave to cool. (Always a really important instruction. Because if you don't, your cake will crack up and the icing will melt. Be patient...)

Now you gotta work on the malteasers bit. In the end I used about four big bags of Malteasers but at the end of the day it depends on the size of your cake. I'm gonna say its better to have too many than not enough, because then you can eat em.

(Also nope. Malteasers are sadly not gluten free. But I used them anyway. Because sometimes cake is worth breaking your usual rules for. I used gluten free flour and I only ate two slices. So s'all good)

ANYWAY. Buttercream:

190 g of softened butter

60 g of cream cheese (think Philadelphia.)

250 g of icing sugar

5 teaspoons of cocoa powder (add more if you taste it and think it needs more chocolate...)

 Cream together all the ingredients into buttercream. It is inevitable at this point that you will get icing sugar absolutely everywhere. That's just the way it is my friend.

Now take your cakes out of their tins and place on a plate. Spread the bottom one with a layer of buttercream. Place the second one top and spread with buttercream. It's important to create an even surface so your malteasers have something sensible to stick to so make sure you fill in the gap between the two halves of the cake properly.

Once all of the buttercream is on the cake, spread it out evenly across the whole cake, aiming to create a smooth, slightly domed surface on top.

Now it's malteaser tiiiime. Your aim is to create a line across the cake, from the bottom, across the surface and down the other side to the plate again. Place more lines on either side of this one until the cake is completely covered.

Push the malteasers into the buttercream ever-so-slightly, then place the cake into the fridge so it all sets solid and you're good to go.

Also I had this for breakfast Monday morning. Before having a very fun and dramatic asthma attack in hospital. Also now I'm on steroids. CHEST INFECTION FTW.

(This explains my lack of posting. Also the lack of savoury cooking because I'm too ill for that. Just cake.)