the best malteser cake

There comes a time in your life when you just have to go for it, and try to make the richest, sweetest, chocolateyest (is that a word? Definitely should be!) cake possible. After much searching around, and even more experimenting, I decided to go for a tried & tested recipe. Not only that, it just looked so good!!

Lorraine Pascale is a former model and pâtissière who is rising in the TV chef world recently in the UK, and it's Lorraine's recipe I had a stab at last week.

There's a link to the original recipe here, but I've also listed it out below for those of you too lazy to click!

Ingredients - Sponge

• 150g (5oz) really soft butter, plus a little extra for greasing
• 250g (9oz) caster sugar
• 150g (5oz) self-raising flour
• 125ml • 4½ fl oz sour cream
• 4 medium eggs (at room temperature)
• 50g (2oz) cocoa powder
• 1 tsp baking powder
• Pinch of salt
• Vanilla pod (or few drops of vanilla extract to taste)

Ingredients - Buttercream

• 100g (3½oz) dark chocolate (minimum 70 per cent cocoa solids)
• 550g (1¼lb) icing sugar
• 250g (9oz) really soft butter
• 2 tbsp milk (or water)

To decorate

• LOTS of Maltesers! (minimum 4 x 135g bags)

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 180C (fan 160C)/350F/gas mark 4.
2. Grease 2 x 20cm (8in) sandwich cake tins with a little butter and sit them on a large baking tray.
3. Put the butter, sugar, flour, sour cream, eggs, cocoa powder, baking powder and salt into a large bowl, add the seeds from the vanilla pod and mix until smooth.
4. Divide evenly between the cake tins, smooth the tops and place in the oven for 25-30 minutes.
5. To check the cakes are baked, insert a small knife into the middle of each cake. If it comes out clean, it's ready to come out. Remove them from the oven and cool on a wire rack.
6. When the cakes are almost cool, start making the buttercream. Break the chocolate into a medium bowl and melt it in the microwave in 30-second blasts, stirring in between.
7. Sift the icing sugar into a large bowl, add the butter and milk (or water) and beat until it is really light and fluffy. Pour in the melted chocolate, stirring all the time.
8. Sit one of the sponges on a serving plate, and put about a third of the buttercream on and spread it around. Sit the other sponge on top and spread the remaining buttercream all over so it is completely covered.
9. Finally, take the Maltesers and stick them all over the cake. There's no need to be ultra-neat and symmetrical about this, but straightish lines do look better!
10. Devour!

This is a really impressive cake and will always encourage lots of "WOW"s from your guests. Nobody usually sees this many Maltesers in one place so it really feels like a little indulgent slab of heaven!

You can currently catch Lorraine Pascale in Fast, Fresh and Easy Food on BBC Two every Monday at 20h30. See the official Lorraine Pascale BBC page here.