Bucket of Maltesers Chocolate Birthday Cake

This is the cake I made for my boyfriend's birthday last week; it was very popular with his family and also his work colleagues so I would say it was definitely a success. I was going to use a recipe for chocolate buttermilk cake from Tea With Bea (recipes from Bea's of Bloomsbury) but the carton of buttermilk I bought split on the way home so I ended up with a carrier bag full of buttermilk which had to go in the bin. I needed to make the cake that evening and had nowhere local that would stock buttermilk; I know you can make buttermilk yourself by adding a dash of lemon juice to milk, but instead I just adapted the recipe. The idea for the decoration was also my own so I guess I can say that this is an original recipe.

Bucket of Maltesers Chocolate Birthday Cake - an original recipe by Caroline Makes

You need:

225g plain chocolate

60g cocoa powder

175g butter

4 eggs

300g caster sugar

175g plain flour

1/2 tsp baking powder

150ml milk

For the buttercream:

150g margarine or butter, softened

300g icing sugar

60g chocolate, melted

For the chocolate ganache:

200g milk chocolate

100ml double cream

For the decorations:

Approximately three packs of Cadbury's chocolate fingers

Large pack (200g) maltesersl;po09

Edible gold shimmer spray e.g. from Dr. Oetker

Start by making the cake. Preheat the oven to 180C. Melt the chocolate and butter in a small pan over a medium heat, and stir until melted. Then stir in the cocoa powder until smooth.

In a separate bowl whisk the eggs and sugar.

Fold in the chocolate mixture then mix in the flour, bicarb of soda and the milk.

Grease and line a baking tin or spray with Cake Release. I used an 8-inch cake tin which meant the cake was very deep and took quite a long time to cook in the oven; you may prefer a 9 inch tin.

Bake for 1 hour in the oven, testing with a skewer. The cake rose quite a lot so I ended up slicing off some of the top.

You can see here how deep the cake is!

When the cake has cooled (first in the tin then on a cooling rack) trim the top so it is flat and cut the cake through the middle so you have two layers.

Make the buttercream: cream the margarine or softened butter with the icing sugar. Melt the chocolate in a bain marie or the microwave and mix in to the buttercream when it has cooled. Spread between the two layers of the cake.

Spray the maltesers with edible gold spray, following the instructions on the can. I think it's best to do this on newspaper or kitchen towel so you don't mess up your work surface. Leave the maltesers to dry for a few minutes.

To make the chocolate ganache, melt the chocolate in a small saucepan and add the cream; the mixture will thicken quite quickly as it cools. When it has cooled enough to put in the fridge, refrigerate for about half an hour.

Spread the chocolate ganache around the side of the cake and stick the chocolate fingers around the cake.

Spread the rest of the chocolate ganache on top of the cake.

Then fill the top of the cake with the gold maltesers.

Here's a view of the cake from the top

... and from the side.

 Yum....

Delicious!

I think this would also be a good cake to make at Easter; the maltesers look a little bit like small eggs or you could also fill the top of the cake with mini eggs. So I am sending this to a few Easter-themed blog challenges:

Choclette's We Should Cocoa, guest-hosted by Rachel Cotterill

Love Cake, hosted by JibberJabberUK