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!

@beatrixpottersalterego I have a memory of glance cherries, nuts, some sort of pineapple and a lot of marzipan with a layer of chocolate in the top, and possibly the bottom too.
In the interests of full disclosure, my Grandma, who was born 1900 was from NE England so I'm really clutching at straws here. There seem to be some real gurus here so I thought I'd ask.

@Tashtegotoo pastry base? They sound like bride slices. Hang on...

Like so

Er... this ingredient doesn't seem very appropriate. 🤔

Do you have a good dentist, @Tashtegotoo? That sounds divine but my NHS 1970s fillings are screaming at the thought. What a great thread. I'm Scottish and I thought the Scots had the monopoly of high sugar, high starch, high fat foods but we're also rans, clearly!

Soupdragon Freudian slip if ever there was one

@BeatrixPottersAlterEgo, you are my newest hero.
I think that's it! My mum has dementia (like Grandma, her mum, before her) and I can't ask her easily about things like that any more. I live in NZ now and I feel like I'm losing connections to home and my family gradually. I'm so grateful, you have made my day!

@Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g. I didn't have a filling until I was 37. I did drink a phenomenal amount of milk. That side of my family skipped back and forth the border over the generations. My mum is from Walkworth and I live near the NZ Warkworth now. There's a Percy Street, it's a bit surreal.

@BeatrixPottersAlterEgo Aunt Sandra's fudge? Never. I'm pretty sure we were only tempted out by a scone from The Copper Kettle but I could be wrong...

@eve ... and as an English exile - has anyone ever found proper buttermilk and soda bread flour to purchase here? I have never found it - and despite the old dear's insistence that only Morton's will do, any old plain flour works and since they stopped selling proper buttermilk - and starting selling cultured buttermilk even in NI, it makes little difference either, I just add lemon juice to milk so make soured milk and it tastes fine.

And this would be my griddle!

justamumnz.com/2017/09/30/maltesers-no-bake-slice/

Here we go - a version from NZ for you to try.

@Tashtegotoo glad to be of assistance! If that one doesn't seem to be it, then message me and I'll have another flick through the books. I became the repository of many a mid century cook book recently!

Normally the best traybake recipes are found in a Presbyterian PWA cookbook, which will have been created in the late 80s in order to raise funds.

If you ever come across such a book, do all you can to acquire it as your own.

Sounds like it would be a guaranteed moneyspinner to produce a 'Best of ...' traybake cookbook, @BlackWhitePurple!

I’m not one to boast, but...
The chocolate addition on the cover is my own

Wonder what YWG stands for? Young 'something' group maybe?

Mind you, Ballymena must be the very heartland of the Protestant traybake so that book is worth it's weight in gold. Or chocolate. or Scotblock fake chocolate

Young Wives Group! I was virtually brought up by one!

isabelle Young Women’s Group.
As a pp has said, I bought it from a girl I worked with in Ballymena in the early 90s.
They were raising funds.

Sorry Peony, I bow to your superior knowledge

Maybe someone can help, I'm in exile in the depths of down south, but last week scored soda bread flour. On the back is a recipe for some things called fluffy American pancakes. but I want to make wee scones. Has anyone a recipe - oven is fine as I have no griddle.
I'm in a mixed marriage too, for my sins, and dh refuses traybakes unless at a funeral; he dislikes golden syrup, apparently. My dd1, however, is a dab hand at top hats and fifteens, and has a reputation as a domestic goddess in work.
See down south, they know nathin about good traybakes and wee buns.

I’ve got this one from a friend. I haven’t actually made it, but she made one for me. It was amazing!! About 17million calories a piece I think

But here's my version:
Use a tin that's about 25x25cm
Base: 300g crushed digestive biscuits, 250g crushed Maltesers, 250g melted butter
PRESS INTO TIN
Caramel layer: Gently heat 2 tins (or less) of caramel, 50g butter, 50g soft brown sugar
POUR ON TO BASE, THEN CHILL
Top layer: 1 jar of Malteser spread, 50g butter, 200g milk chocolate - melted/ gently heated in microwave
SPREAD EVENLY
Decoration: Whilst top layer is still tepid, press Maltesers into it - approx 200g
Ta-dah!
The caramel layer was defo too runny - maybe it should have less (or no) butter. And it does upset me crushing the Maltesers for the base - such Malteser abuse!
Enjoy

@Tomorrowsanewday

Please proceed to screenshot entire book. Thank you.

@eggandonion

my mum was renowned for her scones - she got asked to make them for all the funeral teas! She died a few years ago and I so regret not getting the detail recipes for those and her stew.

I did however find a scrap of paper in 1 of her cookbooks with the following:

Scones
1lb soda bread flour
3-4oz butter
3oz caster sugar
2 eggs
1/2 pint butter milk.

no instructions though.

It's like the technical challenges on bake off. That's brilliant, getting the proportion of everything helps.
We were a coi household, the excitement when someone in the Mother's Union had a new recipe was mighty.