Nigella's chocolate malteser cake

[IAmRubyLennox]

Has anyone made this, and if so was it successful?

I want to make it for DS1's birthday cake on Friday, but I'm a little bit anxious as the recipe (which is in 'Feast', if you're looking) only wants 15g of butter in the cake.

This strikes me as incredibly little, is this really true or a typo?

I have about 12 years of trusting Nigella, but after the Guinness gingerbread debacle at Christmas, I'm not prepared to take the risk

All advice gratefully received.

Sounds great, doesn't it? The results were crap. Do a basic chocolate sponge recipe, bung some chocolate buttercream or whatever in the middle of it, plus maltesers. I agree with you about not always trusting her cakes - although some are great.

Now explain the gingerbread debacle (ears pricked up and eyebrows raised emoticon)!

you've just confirmed my worst suspicions!

Think I will do that very thing, DS1 and his tiny mates will never know the difference.

The gingerbread was an expensive tragedy. I swear I followed the recipe to the letter.

It looked absolutely fine on top, just like gingerbread. Sadly, this only lasted until you went about 2mm deep into it. After that, the entire shooting match was heavy, opaque and sort of gelatinous. Think gingerbread with a texture somewhere between bread-pudding and Turkish Delight.

The flavour wasn't entirely unpleasant, but the texture was so unutterably abysmal that I binned the lot there and then.

Don't say I didn't warn you

Have you done the gingerbread in How to Be A domestic Goddess? That one definitely works, but I leave off the icing because icing is shit. Just white shit. Sorry. Good luck with the chocolate cake

I make a Nigella ginger cake, not the Guinness one, and it's fantastic, although I reduced the amount of black treacle and instead increase the amount of golden syrup.

Love the white shit on top

I've made it. Accidentally used self raising flour and baking powder . Turned out like a sponge you'd wash your car with. Was still edible but incredibly sickly due to the Horlicks. I still have the rest of the jar of Horlicks in the cupboard and feel queasy every time I see it. I think maybe a normal chocolate cake decorated with Maltesers would be nicer.

Ive made the malteser cake and we really liked it.

I made it. Very sweet, verging on sickly. Looked nice though.

Yes, I do have a very sweet tooth.

I've made it for loads of birthdays and always loved it. Very very sweet though.

Mrs Columbo and YourCall, I've done the gingerbread in 'How to be a Domestic Goddess' and that turned out nicely (I'm an icing fan). Think she should have stuck to that.

You've all successfully put me off the original malteser cake recipe (sorry Shrew, lone voice in the wilderness). So next question - can you tell me your very best chocolate cake recipes to appeal to 6 year olds?

Is the 'boys birthday cake' (seriously, we're gender-coding cakes?) in the Tana Ramsay book any cop?

Our DS love the malteser cake - but also do a malteaser topic on 'normal' chocolate cakes / cupcakes too. I know we usually end up using less sugar in most recipes anyway but too much can change the texture too.

Some of our Ds like the chocolate gingerbread too - we do like it extra gingery though .

Oh I loved the malteser cake - I've made it with normal drinking choc powder tooo.... mmmm...

I like the cake she does with the custard middle... can't remember which book it is though but it is basically butter icing with a few tablespoons of custard powder which is yummy...

I would just make a normal sponge cake opr chocolate cake and put on some lovely butter icing and top with loads of sweets and things.

www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/3431/chocolate-brownie-cake
this cake is utterly fantastic. Seriously, it lasted about 10 minutes in our house and was really really easy to make.

I've also made the malteser cake and loved it.