Chocolate Malt Cake

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Another Children in Need Day, another evening spent making fairy cakes with wholemeal flour because I forgot and was too late to get to the shop. Ditto, contemplating whether I could use cornflour to bulk out the fast disappearing icing sugar (ditto) and make it stretch to the 11th and twelfth cakes, on the basis that if I threw on enough sprinkles, no one would notice. These and other less creative thoughts were running through my head at 10.30 p.m. last night, but it's not my substandard fairy cakes that I want to share with you this morning.

No. What I want to share with you is the chocolate malt cake that is most definitely staying, selfishily, at home for my own purposes. For some reason, this cake popped into my head yesterday morning and wouldn’t leave. I’m not sure I’ve ever made it before, but I knew I had it scribbled down somewhere. Not just chocolate, but Ovaltine too. I’m not sure why I have such a fondness for Ovaltine – it’s not something that I remember as particularly featuring in my childhood, the whole ‘Ovaltiney’ thing being before my time, but somehow it’s there. In this cake, it adds a malty undertone to what is essentially a chocolate cake, but it’s a very welcome undertone.  

Dusted with icing sugar, still warm from the oven - a warm blanket of a cake, which was just what I needed last night, what with IT Support the Husband still away. So what if the Children in Need cakes were iced in a sub-standard fashion...

And although I've alluded to it just now, I must stress that if you can get your hands on this cake before it has completely cooled from the oven, it is well worth it...

Chocolate Malt Cake

350g plain chocolate, chopped (or use buttons/drops of cooking chocolate – Bloc is good)

200g unsalted butter

7tbsp Ovaltine

150g light muscovado sugar

3 large eggs

2tsp vanilla extract

160g wholemeal self raising flour

Icing sugar for dusting 

Grease and line a 20cm square tin, and pre-heat the oven to 180⁰C. 

In a pan, melt 200g of the chocolate and the butter, remove from the heat and allow to cool slightly, whileyou blend the Ovaltine with 2 tbsp water, and then, in a large bowl (using a mixer if you have one), beat together the eggs and sugar till light and foamy. Beat in the Ovaltine mixture, then the melted chocolate & butter, and the vanilla extract. Stir in the flour, then fold in the remaining 150g of chocolate pieces. Scrape the batter in to your prepared tin and bake for about 40 minutes till risen and just firm. 

Allow to cool (but not too much) on a rack, then dust with icing sugar and cut into squares. 

Not that you need to put it on a plate, you understand...