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!

What do you call the polo mint shaped bun which is dough that is deep fat fried and rolled in sugar?

Definitely a gravy ring. To qualify as a doughnut it has to have jam in the middle!

Why a gravy ring? Where is the gravy??

(I am English and atheist so have no reason to be here other than for the recipes 😂😂)

Definitely a gravy ring. To be a doughnut it must have no hole in the middle and have a filling.

Gravy is an old word for oil. (As in - frying/cooking oil - not oil you heat your house with!)

Google says it's because gravy was an archaic name for cooking oil, @SoupDragon. (No, me neither.)

So, I’ve just had the pleasure of telling DH and DS IT’S A GRAVY RING!

though the cake portions are too big a cake portion can never be too big. I’m always eyeing the big piece, but then I do like my cakes .

Didn’t know we had so many knowledgeable gardeners here.
DMIL hailed from Co Tipperary and always had green fingers and if I admired a particular plant next thing she had taken a slip and had it growing in a pot for me.
Now I know where her green fingers came from.

I'd love someone to give me slips, My granny was from Roscrea but died before I was born.
Dhs granny always called the fat in her chip pan gravy. Chips were about all she could make, we always think of her when someone telly chef raves about peasant cooking.

Tomorrowsanewday
Have you been to an Avoca shop ?
I LOVE cake too but their slice of cake portion size is huge (as is the price).

You are not going to believe this Egg that is where my DMIL is from.
Someone had posted a link for census for researching family history and I was able to look her up.
The family moved to N.I. in 1940s

We keep meaning to go down and visit. Her older Dsis said they drove through it and it had changed so much she didn’t recognise it.
DMIL Grandparents are buried in the churchyard there.

To be a doughnut it must have no hole in the middle

But then it will not be shaped like a nut (as in bolt).

Interesting about the word "gravy", thanks. Much better than the ring doughnut With the hole filled with Bistro that I was imagining.

James Nesbit looks more like he'd eat savoury stuff?

Jimmy comes into the shop I work in, he came in a bought loads of cocktail sausages for a party he was having. Don't think he'd be good with sweet stuff.

LadyEloise we have an Avoca in Belfast which I’ve been in a few times. I’ve bought their takeaway crumbles but never tried the cake.
Their pear and vanilla scones are beautiful.

Oh for a hot fresh gravy ring out of a van at an agricultural show somewhere!

Can I ask another question for the posters from ROI?
My DMIL would always call us Alannah spg? as a term of endearment. I always wondered if this was taken from the Irish language meaning dear or darling? Can anyone enlighten me?

Anyone living near the north coast the shop I work in sells it.

Where are you on the north coast? I haven't been there for years.
My granny ended up in Belfast, her mother married a bit of a rogue. So there was a few years in Dublin and a few in kildare.
My granny married a civil servant and moved north in 1921. If Roscrea mil has relations called Robert and Richard then we are related! My distant cousin who does the family tree tracked me that way.

DMIL had a bit of a sad story. Her parents were a mixed marriage and both sides of their families disowned them when they married. She didn’t really talk much about aunts, cousins etc. Her father was a labourer and they moved where the work was. The children were born in various towns. Her oldest Dsis was born in Athlone.
We do have a letter from one of her aunts who kept in touch. Must hoke it out.
She came from a family of 4 girls and 1 boy. The boys name was Frank/Frances. Her father’s name was Michael but not sure of any other family names.

My auntie described herself as a 'great hoker' because she never ended up with odd socks, she always hoked out washing. I need to hoke more and tidy up.
I think the scandalous mixed marriage in my Tipp family involved a widow with one child who remarried and had about 12 more with the Catholic husband.
Dh's grandfather was a widower who remarried and had a load more kids. A relation is doing a family tree and has a photo of a headstone with a caption 'John Smith buried with both his wives'. I agree it is a bit odd, but it does look bigamous.

I haven't tried this yet, so don't know if it works, but there is a make-your-own-condensed-milk recipe in the link here
www.biggerbolderbaking.com/how-to-make-condensed-milk/
(not sure how to add links on the mobile site, sorry). I recently made fudge for the first time, then worried when I couldn't get more condensed milk.

I love this thread and have bookmarked lots of recipes. DH is from Belfast, but MIL doesn't bake so he's now feeling bereft at all the traybakes he has allegedly missed out on when he was growing up.

His best bet is to go to funerals as a hobby. Not the actual funerals, more visiting the bereaved. I almost ate too many traybakes at one of those.

Brill Chrestomanci3 I was wondering if this was possible and what ingredients would be needed.
You are now my favourite poster .

Tomorrow isanewday
Yes Alana is pet/ darling. Probably from the Irish for baby - leanbh.
Pronounced lan (as in ban) and av

Thank you LadyEloise, knowing her I thought it would be something like that. It has made me cry. She has been dead nearly 6 years and I miss her every day.

SoupDragon I don’t think it’s nut as in goes on bolt.
I think it means a little roundish object. As in nuts being an alternative word for bollocks (sorry to lower the tone of the thread).

Just catching up on the thread. I wasn't particularly missing random outdoor museums but I suddenly now am. Anyone been to the Famine village in Donegal? Or the weaver's farmhouse, also in Donegal?

Garden centres always make me think of when I studied politics at Queen's. Prof Paul Bew taught us about the 'garden centre factor' when it came to the moderate vote being squeezed. The theory was that middle class Prods, if it was nice weather, went to the garden centre instead of going to vote.

I love the idea of your DH minding half Herne Hill’s cats for them eggandonion. Have you ever been to the lido at Brockwell Park? One of my cousins is after planning a trip here as soon as it’s possible & reasonable.
My granny’s big sisters (well, half-sisters, & only 3 of them) used to make pineapple upside-down cake for us. I think it was my Daddy’s favourite when he was wee. I used to think it was like magic...
(Am so tired I thought you’d Protestants stuck in your sugar. Presumably tiny wee Borrower-sized ones. )

Think that letting toddlers lick the bowl after baking cakes is excellent parenting Beatrix. Eggs are safe again now & have been for years. Licking the bowl is one of the great joys in life. Traybakes definitely an easy way to gain weight (as well as, hopefully, a delicious one) - I’ve to start increasing the dose of Creon (why are there not more drugs named for characters in Greek theatre?) when I eat things with a higher fat content. Large volume of traybake should work there. Was also given a metaphorical gold star for eating porridge for breakfast as apparently oats are good for me. Am seeing that as essentially an instruction to make & then eat my own weight in flapjacks...

Tomorrow what is this “too much cake” of which you speak? When physically unable to consume the volume of cake provided God has helpfully provided foil/wee boxes for Saving For Later. Or a Helpful Volunteer can often be enlisted to prevent the Tragedy that is Uneaten Cake. (In my case usually my Daddy. Sudden availability of vegan cake means I was brought a LOT of it by visitors when in hospital last summer at a point when I could still hardly eat. He did quite well from it...)

Pierre
When I was very wee part of my Daddy’s job was overseeing elections in NI to [try to] ensure everything was In Order. (He’d go over & stay with family & return laden with soda bread & whatever other treats his aunt could manage cram into his bag.) Will have to ask him if he/the NI Office were aware of said trend...

The vegan condensed milk available to buy is coconut - it may just taste sweet rather than of coconut though, iyswim. There are also recipes available for making condensed milk from other non-dairy milks. I’ve some vegan “butter” as opposed to margarine that I’ve been thinking to use in baking. Am just debating what to make. So many options - but so much fear that a vegan version will be at best disappointing, & at worst an actual abomination that needs Burning With Fire rather than just putting in the food waste bin. Sadly that’s far too often the case, though things are improving all the time.