Chocolate Malt Cake

My girlfriend mentioned in passing that she’d once had a fantastic malt cake that tasted just like Maltesers (known as Whoppers to you Americans). It’s been years since I had those kinds of candies, but as soon as she said it, I could practically taste it. And, of course, I decided that if it was something she liked, I wanted to make it. Do you notice a theme here? If M likes something, I want to make sure she has it; it must be love!

So last week I looked up various recipes on the internet, but from what I could tell, they didn’t have enough malt to make a really malty cake. And they seemed overly sweet. Plus, I also wanted it to be a moist cake, one that would last a few days, because I knew that the two of us would take a while to eat it. And in fact, I got sick with the flu the day after I made it, and M ate the cake on her own, over the course of a week. So here is what I came up with:

Ingredients for the cake:
115 g butter, plus butter for the pan
1 cup sugar
1.5 cup malt powder (I used Horlick’s, the name of which always amuses me)
.75 cup unsweetened cocoa powder, plus extra for the pan
4 eggs
2 cups flour
3 tsp baking powder
.5 tsp salt
1.75 cup soy milk (milk or cream could be used here, but I happened to have soy milk already open in the fridge)

Ingredients for the frosting:
50 g butter
.5 cup double cream (the frosting should be rich, so I used double cream, though single cream or milk or soy milk could be used too)
.75 cup malt powder
.5 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
2 cups icing sugar

Instructions:

1. Melt the butter and mix with the sugar, malt, and cocoa.
2. Beat the eggs and when the mixture is cool, add the eggs.
3. Mix the flour, baking powder, and salt. Add it to the liquid mixture.
4. Add the milk and blend well.
5. Grease a cake pan with butter and “flour” it with cocoa.
6. Pour the batter into the pan and bake for 30-45 minutes at 180 C, checking after 30 minutes to see if the cake is ready.
7. While the cake cools, make the frosting. Melt the butter, and add the other ingredients to it.
8. Mix the ingredients together well, so the malt and cocoa are no longer grainy.
9. When the cake is cool, frost it and serve.