Malteaser cake recipe - help a Catholic out

[Lunawuna]

Help on an Ecumenical matter please So I've been dipping into the world of traybakes - I can make a pretty respectable caramel square (nice, thick, chewy caramel!) and Mars bar crispy square, but I need a good recipe for Malteaser cake.

I tried the BBC Good Food recipe the other day and it didn't have that lovely feeling of your pupils dilating with the sweetness of it all like a good traybake normally has. Am I doomed to never get it right because of my lack of Prod blood? Help! How can getting the right ratio of digestive biscuits, butter, syrup and chocolate be so hard?!

I'm normally a good baker! Honest!

I was brought up Baptist in NI.

My lasting impression from those years going to Sunday school is that I was taught Jesus loved me and that I was special. We used to sing a chorus:

I'm special because God has loved me
For he gave the best thing that he had to save me
His own son Jesus crucified to take the blame
For all the bad things I have done
Thank you Jesus thank you Lord
For loving me so much
I know I don't deserve anything
Help me feel your love right now
To know deep in my heart
That I'm your special friend

I'm horrified at some of the stories on here - the end times, the kissing boy stuff. That's just wrong and thankfully I never was taught any of that stuff in my upbringing.

OK, back to the traybakes. I currently have half a pack of Malteser squares in my fridge. And am heading out to the shop now and debating what to buy next ... I know shop-bought are never as good but I am rubbish at making them! Perhaps not such a good Prod after all

Practice makes perfect - start with krispie buns (not the Mars Bar version).
DD1 had a Baptist friend who told the whole of first class that Santa didn't exist, he wasn't in the Bible. Then gave personal testimony to my three year old just to make sure. Which I could cope with, but their house was like Santa's grotto. There are a lot of Baptists where we live, mostly from England. They seem to enjoy a glass of wine.

When this madness ends I will make a point of going to the St Joseph's Young Priest's Society cake sale and report back.

Practice indeed! DH will be very happy with that. I was brave yesterday and ventured into the world of Mint Aero squares. I could have sworn I saw tears in DH's eyes when he tasted it. He's said he's now only eating mint Aero in traybake form. We've been discussing what other chocolate bars would work mixed in with digestives, chocolate and syrup. He's suggested sliced up Mars bar so that you actually get some chewy nougat to eat, as opposed to melting them down altogether to mix in with krispies.

I suggested to my family that chocolate digestives would be good in a cheesecake base, they were horrified. Then dh asked if we could make banoffi. I find fruit a bit healthy, but I suppose so!
Wide wide as the ocean is the current state of my hips.

Egg I used to have no problem melting the mars bars but haven’t tried making them for about 8 years after the disastrous attempt for DS birthday party when they just turned into a congealed dry mess.

I'm not an atheist, but my church experiences as a child were traumatic. I don't really know what I believe to be honest.

I did cause ructions at Sunday school once by asking why men had several wives and that was ok but women were only allowed one husband. I wasn't even being a smart arse, I was very inquisitive and wanted to know. It didn't go down well.

Baptists are masters of a good hymn. Hearing a congregation spontaneously start harmonising and singing in counterpart is quite something.

Back to the buns. I saw a photo the other day of home made snowballs. You know, proper N Ireland bakery snowballs, with the crumbly white sponge, jam and coconut. And now I want to bake some.

Pierre, I'm not sure I can get over you putting your traybakes in a fridge

A battered tin, surely? With a bit of foil at the bottom? Sitting out where you're always looking at it?

I'm too scared to bake snowballs. I can't manage anything verging on spherical.

On the subject of potential young priest cake sales, DH reliably informs me that that Christian Brothers down the side of Queen's SU did a cracking fry back in his day, for the low low price of £3

Lunawuna, you may be the first to create a new traybake with your experiments.
It would have to be given a mumsnetty name in keeping with the thread!
I wondered if Banoffee would be mentioned. I think it has to be my favourite. I do one without the toppings because DH doesn’t like bananas so I put mandarins on his and banana on mine. DS takes his without. We’re a complicated family 😬

I love tinned mandarins, I will buy some now.
There was a Christian cafe just down from Queens Union, maybe Fitzwilliam Street, were dh had elevenses. I was in with him one day, and a colleague had a scone. It wasn't a great scone, she described it a a fadgey wee scone.
My cake tins are a plastic Cadburys Roses, and a Victoria assorted fancy shape one. I'm sure my mother only bought things in tins because she needed tins.

Was your mum the inventor of recycling?
You had to be inventive in those days.

There is a place near Greyabbey, Co Down, Harrison’s, that’s a farm but they also have a gift shop and restaurant with beautiful views overlooking the Ards peninsula.
Right as you enter the restaurant they have 2 massive chiller cabinets with a treasure trove of deserts.
I stood that long gazing at them I had to be nudged on.

Best scones I’ve ever tasted were in a little tea shop called The Cosy Chair near Jordanstown, since closed down. Toffee apple and crunchie.

I’ll travel the country in my quest for deliciousness.

sorry, were you the inventor of recycling

It was pretty much a rule at church in the 1980s that all the ladies had their own tins and/or tupperwares labelled with a label made on a Dymo label maker.

Tinned mandarins on top of a sponge cake (square obviously, to fit traybake requirements) covered in cream is another church speciality.

And to throw in something positive about my church formative years, there is one thing that I am very grateful to to this day. And that's the complete obliviousness that I have with regards to superstition. All the things that otherwise rational adults do because they're afraid of bad luck. I've never heard of most of them and I think my life is better as a result. Or reading horoscopes, or doing tarot cards, or having a reading with a medium. I wouldn't touch any of them. So that's good.

Inspired to have a go at the Maltesers recipe up thread - not in the UK so digestives not easy to find (and expensive when you do!) so I used lotus biscuits... it's chilling now but the bowl suggests they're a suitable substitute!

Picture fail.....

Oops

Sorry..... give up - heads back to the freshly baked buttermilk scones....

I was considering the purchase of a label maker when I got sucked into PTA bake sales.

There's the most glorious place in Carrickfergus, I only went once after my single trip to what was then, I think, NI's only La Leche League group.

But oh flip. It clearly hadn't changed since the 50s. Formica tables. Smelled like my great granny's house. Proper chips, egg sodas, and half of it was a bakery with the most amazing selection of traybakes and iced fingers. I left the place with the baby under one arm and about five boxes under the other. Total bliss. It's probably all hipster now.

I'll add another positive thing about my lot. To give them their dues, they weren't one bit sectarian that I can remember,and actively discouraged any us and them stuff because everyone else was going to hell anyway unless saved I was really shocked when I was older, and out into the world, and heard the things other people would just casually come out with.

Beatrix I’m not sure how long you’re going back.
I had a relative who lived in Carrickfergus.
There are 2 places that come to mind. One since closed down called O’Neills and the other Delaceys both in North Street.
Carrickfergus like other small towns has become a shell of itself.
Very sad as many a Sunday School trip was spent there.
It does have a lovely seafront and marina.
Not forgetting the Mauds ice cream shop.

This would be 10 ish years ago... Delaceys rings a bell,though I don't think I even looked at the name once I spotted the food

As a Scot of Prebyterian origins, the extravagance of these traybakes is blowing my mind! My mother would divide a Mars bar in three between us three kids. She was a very good baker but it was all plainer fare, girdle scones, pancakes etc. With homemade jam. I do have fond memories if an elderly neighbour in Edinburgh making lovely chewy rice crispy cakes that, I think were made with butter, sugar and syrup, no chocolate! If anyone has a recipe for them I would love it!

That’s more than likely it.
Bakery at the front. Huckster of a cafe at the back.
I used to take DS to a Jo Jingles down there. He says he’s still mentally scarred!
Fussy bod DS loved their chicken goujons.
They have perfected their selling of buns, giving each a number. So it makes it easier saying 2 number 5s instead of pointing and saying one of them, no up and to the left a bit 😬

By the way, in Scotland we tend to call griddles "girdles" for some reason.

Wbeezer I bet those rice Krispies buns had The Secret Ingredient. Which was the much loved but sadly gone McEwan's Highland Toffee. The wee 5p bar, not the extravagant 10p bar 😁

I didnt know Highland toffee was no more 🙁. It was good value as it took so long to eat!