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!

Thank you FiveEyes but I've just been reading that a salad is orange jelly with grated carrot.... does this.... go in a sandwich?

In my (extensive!) experience, a Presbyterian salad sandwich will be lettuce (round green lettuce, not iceberg and certainly not any of your cos or frisbee), boiled egg and tomato. And made with butter (or more likely, Flora) not mayonnaise.

Thank you isabellerosignol.

Frisbee lettuce is a great name. Picturing slices of iceberg hurtling through the air

Frisbee?

Frisée obviously...

After the last Protestant tray bake thread I asked my FB local vicar (CofI from NI with a Presbyterian mother) about Mars Bar and apple sandwiches, and he went quite misty-eyed at the memory. He also fondly remembered grape and cream cheese sandwiches, which do sound quite appealing. His wife is not from NI and was 😲 at the thought of Mars Bar and apple sandwiches.

Sorry, I cross posted with you and it sounds like a snotty response. That's not how I intended it, I had just noticed my autocorrect mistake

Frisbee lettuce is a far better name actually!

No it didn't sound snotty at all. I will have difficulty not thinking of it as frisbee lettuce now

Is this why I never knew what a traybake was till my late 30s???

I’ve lived in France for half my life, but it was lacking in culinary literature until I brought this masterpiece with me...

I"m church of Ireland from Dublin and I can't make tray bakes, are they part of my heritage or is it different in the republic. I thought it was a rich sahm pta thing. I have vague recollections of calling a caramel square a 'wellington sq' and I've no idea why. Is that a NI thing?

crankysaurus YES! I was at uni and had a flatmate who loved this weird "tiffin" stuff. And then going to baby groups at church halls where there was always Mars Bar crispies, and I was like "what? Mars bars? Melted into rice crispies? That's not baking!" Then I tried it, and my mind was blown. We had cake and candy stalls at my primary school for St Patrick's Day and of all the baked goods brought in there was NEVER anything resembling a traybake.

It's very different in the free state, our coi primary cake sales are very poor compared to a north Antrim church fete. I do my best to eat their offerings, but they aren't great.
Protestant plant sales on the other hand are excellent.

a plant sale! omg, i'm so excited! :-| no i'm not
I'd prefer the cakes.

From what I can remember of my own childhood RoI Protestant cake sales were much more about fairy cakes, biscuits and chocolate cornflake cakes than traybakes. Funerals featured biscuits from packets and Tea Time Express cakes.

Yep, Rocky Road was a real revelation.

I honestly wouldn't even know what tray to use, would a roasting tray even work? We only have flat baking /pizza trays or round deep cake tins otherwise.

PetitsGateaux you’re toying with us. I feel so inadequate now with my Ballymena YWG booklet.

How do your recipes go down in France?

Crankysaurus the trays I use would be about an inch deep. The roasting tin would probably be difficult to get them out of.

Not long after the last thread, I was invited to a gospel hall baptism. On the surface, I went to support my friend, but really, I went for the food. I've always loved a grape and cream cheese sandwich and was not disappointed. Mars bar and apple, though, had eluded me until that day and imagine my delight when I spotted them!

A few years ago, my CoI church had a do (can't remember why). The local Presbyterian minister was invited. At the end, he made a short speech, during which he said the traybakes were excellent. What higher compliment could anyone ask for?

I remember when I was about 12, my mother was involved in some event with the coi bishop attending. There was a top table, and our crust was there. They got salad I think.
She did cream cheese and celery, and cream cheese and pineapple sandwiches. But her friend did them in a roll, like a sandwich as traybake.

I feel inspired by this thread and will be going on the borrow for a tin.

you don't have your own tin?!?! I cannot believe it.

The last thing i made was something ''healthy'' by the happy pear twins. dates and ground cashew nut base (bit of tahini as well I think) and then a caramel filling and then dark chocolate topping with a bit of peanut butter so it didnt completely harden. delicious but liquidising the dates nearly finished off my hand held liquidiser and the ingredients were about 30 euro

Have only just become aware of their existence, in my mid-forties, GoddessOfGettingThereInTheEnd!

I feel really sad that I'm going to miss all the church fetes this year. I only go for the food, now I'm a protestant godless heathen. Think I'll make a Presbyterian salad sandwich tomorrow, and have it in the garden while gazing at a hydrangea. All the Presbyterian church ladies I know have beautiful hydrangeas.

These mars bar and apple sandwiches... as in - bread, butter, slices of apple, slices of mars bar, another slice of buttered bread? As in mars bar and apple instead of cheese? What variety of apple? So many questions!

Yes. In my circles it's thick sliced white bread, has to be very very fresh, with red apples sliced very thinly, mars bars sliced very thinly, and then sort of layered like Jenga. Bread buttered with good butter.

I have also seen it done with slices of Veda bread - one slice buttered with a few bits of mars bar and a few segments of satsuma on top.