ACCEPT YOUR FETE
Surprise: it's a triple chocolate malt cake
I made a cake.
In other circumstances, when invited to contribute a cake to a party for Substack, a platform which also hosts such baking greats as Nicola Lamb, Yotam Ottolenghi and Ravneet Gill of No Days Off, I might have demurred (I was, in fact, supposed to be on holiday by now which would have provided the perfect excuse), but the summer fete label made it feel doable. Not that I would presume to put my victoria sponge up against those of the WI Tea Tent, but I reckon I could do respectably at the cake stall.
Play to your strengths, I thought – and my strength, it turns out, is the dog (related: the lone Underdog promo event [Chudleigh, Devon: 8th July; Penzance, 10th July] I’ve done without him was also the one where I sold fewest copies afterwards), so the theme was obvious. If I were more modern I would no doubt have used some sort of bot to design me a cake, but as I get a rash when anyone mentions AI, I simply did a google image search for inspiration. Some of the results were magnificent, some… heartwarming:
I went for one that felt easiest to achieve, with the correct piping nozzle (lesson for life, however many piping nozzles you accumulate in mixed sets for the piping you very very rarely do, you never have the correct one for the specific task in hand). Cake wise, I was worried about scaling up a classic sponge, which really stands or falls on its height, but I didn’t have the budget for the very chocolatey number I made for a friend’s wedding a few years ago, so I decided to make the triple chocolate malt cake from my favourite of my cookbooks, The A-Z of Eating, because I am perennially obsessed with malt, and due to the low proportion of flour, it’s denser and squidgier and thus felt more amenable to twiddling around with.
I’m sharing the recipe from the book here, but I scaled it up using the calculator from my pal the estimable Cupcake Jemma’s website to fit 2 x 26cm sandwich tins and then made a single tier to cut out for the top, leaving some offcuts for snacking on when I got home last night (obviously I didn’t eat my own cake when Nicola and Yotam’s were on offer… Rav’s was already mere crumbs by the time I got to the table). I stacked the first two, sandwiched with malt buttercream (4 x the recipe below) then cut out a half moon of the top to make a muzzle. Gave the whole lot a coating of buttercream, sketched out where I wanted the eyes, nose and ears to go with a skewer, froze it for 10 minutes as suggested by Chelsey of the Chelsweets website, the woman responsible for the westie cake above (sssh, what he doesn’t know etc), then got to work with a piping bag furnished with a large grass tip. (While buying this nozzle I also invested in some XL piping bags because the tiny ones just make everything even messier and put me in a very bad mood.)
Though I wish I’d paid more attention to the direction of the hair growth, and the temperatures didn’t make it an ideal day for faffing around with buttercream, I wasn’t displeased with the result (the eyes and nose were black fondant icing and the tongue a strawberry meringue I found in the cornershop while looking for white chocolate thin enough to snap diagonally to make the ears), and basically if I can do it, you certainly can, though by the time it was cut, the layers were a little bit more compressed than I would have liked… sorry NEVER APOLOGISE NEVER EXPLAIN as someone reminded me last night. Oh, and Nicola and Yotam’s cakes, a strawberry and a peach and matcha were delicious, unsurprisingly – it was a lovely party all round in fact, great to chat to many other authors, most of whom were Substack Bestsellers. Like meeting royalty (apart from Mark Diacono).
Triple chocolate malt cake
Serves 8
50g dark chocolate
250g butter, softened
250g soft light brown sugar
1/2 tsp salt
100g cocoa powder
150g classic Horlicks or other malted milk powder
100g plain flour
3 tsp baking powder
3 eggs, beaten
250ml milk (you probably won’t need it all)
For the icing and decoration
140g butter, softened
Pinch of salt
50g malted milk pwder
200g icing sugar
4 tbsp milk
10 Oreos or similar (make your own here)
A handful of Maltesers (buy a big bag and eat the rest)
Melt the chocolate in a bain marie or a microwave and allow to cool but not solidify. Meanwhile you can get on with the rest. Heat the oven to 200C/fan 180C (I always use fan) and grease and base line 2 x 20cm sandwich tins.
Briefly beat the butter in a food mixer or with beaters to soften, then beat in the sugar and salt until the mixture is nice and airy (about 5 minutes).
Sift the cocoa powder, malted milk powder, flour and baking powder into a large bowl (cocoa powder in particular tends to be quite lumpy so this is worth doing) and mix.
Gradually beat the eggs into the butter and sugar mixture, scraping the bowl down as necessary, and making sure it’s all incorporated before adding any more (if it looks like it’s curdling at any point, add a spoonful of the dry ingredients).
Beat in roughly half the dry ingredients, followed by the melted chocolate, followed by the rest, and then just enough milk so that it falls easily off a spoon without flowing off. Divide between the tins, level the top, and bake for about 25-30 minutes until a skewer comes out clean. (Keep an eye towards the end and turn the temperature down slightly if the tops look like they’re burning.)
Allow the cakes to cool completely. To make the icing, beat the butter until soft, then sift in the Horlicks and icing sugar and add the salt. Beat together until airy, scraping down the bowl as necessary, then add just enough milk to make it spreadable but not soft.
Put the less favoured looking cake on a plate or board. Top with about a third of the icing, building it up towards the edge, then put the second cake on top. Spoon the remaining icing on top and then decorate with crushed biscuits and Maltesers (give them a whack with a rolling pin). Alternatively, ice as a dog as above.
Recipe from The A-Z of Eating (Fig Tree, 2016)
Wilf
Has had a severe haircut (huge thanks to James at House of Baxter for his patience and bravery) and is now almost exclusively eating mince or chicken with oats/pearl barley/rice because I’m over scraping hepatic dry food into the bin. We’re going on holiday tomorrow, walking in Devon and camping, for which I have purchased him a dog poncho (!! don’t even) to try and stop him stealing my sleeping bag, and a sleeping mat. Unfortunately the small poncho swamped him (like Edward Enninful’s Moncler collection as someone observed) so it’s a race against time to try and get an XS in time. Also he stepped on some Juicy Fruit yesterday which I had to cut out of his paw, and is having occasional, mildly concerning spasms of shivering which we’re seeing the vet about this evening before our 6am train. CLASSIC Wilf timing.
Other stuff
I wrote a piece about my favourite coastal UK ice cream parlours
for The Sunday Times travel section, which didn’t include the Harbour Bar in Scarborough because I hadn’t been there yet, but now would do
Wednesday, 8th July, CHUDFEST with Orlando Murrin, Chudleigh, Devon – 7:30pm
Friday, 10th July, Penzance Literary Festival with Orlando Murrin, The Acorn – 5pm
Saturday, 3rd October, Henley Literary Festival, 6pm
Sunday, 10th October, Parisot Festilitt, Tarn-et-Garonne, France
15th-22nd October, Bland Badger writing retreat with Molly Wizenberg, Sommières, France: one single, one twin left (last year we had a lovely mother-daughter pair, the former of whom simply came to read and swim and eat delicious food, so if you happen to have a partner, pal or family member who fancies a few days in the South of France, but doesn’t want to write, the twin might be for you)
Terrific cake!
Utterly gutted to have missed this, and you!