Recipe: Chocolate and Ginger Sponge Cake

On Friday afternoons the small boy and I like to bake something, usually a cake to offer any visitors over the weekend. We decided to make a chocolate sponge cake and as an experiment we added some Beech’s Chocolates Ginger Thins to the cake. It was delicious, so I’ve decided to share the recipe.

A simple sponge cake is often our bake of choice. It’s easy to throw together, with minimal mess and ticks all the right “cooking with mummy” boxes for my son.

Chocolate & Ginger Sponge Cake

Ingredients:

4oz sugar
4oz butter or margarine (I used stork)
2 eggs
4oz self raising flour
2 dessert spoons of cocoa powder
2 teaspoons of ground ginger
3 Beech’s Chocolate Ginger Thins
splash of milk if needed

Recipe: Chocolate and Ginger Sponge Cake

Method:

1. Cream the butter and sugar together until fluffy. Stir in the eggs.
2. Add the cocoa powder and the ground ginger and combine. Then sift in the flour and stir through. If the cake batter is too thick (which it might be a little) add a drop of milk until it is the right consistency.
3. Put mixture into a lined loaf tin and put the thins half way into the cake at regular intervals (see picture).
4. Bake in pre-heated oven at 190 degrees for 30 minutes.
5. Leave to cool and then try not to eat it all in one go.

It’s utterly delicious on its own, but would be lovely slightly warm with a scoop of ice cream. The chocolate thins impart a deliciously subtle flavour of ginger into the cake. Definitely something we’ll be baking again.

Beech’s Fine Chocolates get the thumbs up from us, I’ll be looking out for them in the future. They’re seriously delicious British made chocolates, perfect for after dinner and equally great to bake with, and what’s more, my hard to please husband loves them.

If you enjoyed this recipe, you might also like to try my award winning Victoria Sponge recipe.

Recipe: Chocolate and Ginger Sponge Cake

Note: We were sent a selection of chocolate thins and bunnies from Beech’s Chocolates for review purposes. All images and opinions are our own.

Malteser Spread & other MARS Munchies

If you live in a house with boys, foodstuffs, especially biscuits seem to mysteriously evaporate, whole packets of them, in minutes. I am of course grateful for this, without the evaporating biscuits my bum would be even bigger than it already is. I was thankful therefore when MARS sent me a lovely hamper of biscuits and sweet treats to keep some tummies filled during hungry half term.

In the hamper were a bag of Milky Way cookies; a bag of Galaxy cookies; a bag of Bounty cookies; a pot of Malteser spread (yes, such a thing exists), a packet of MARS cake bars and a huge Galaxy treat cake.

Naturally the cookies evaporated on sight, I did manage to sneak a nibble. They’re available from Tesco’s and if you enjoy a freshly baked cookie, then I’m pretty sure you’ll enjoy them.

The Galaxy cookies (£1.30 for 4 from Tesco) were large and full of decent sized chocolatey chunks, not too crunchy, nicely soft and an enjoyable cookie. The small boy naturally went a little bit berserk over the Milky Way Cookies (£1 for 10 mini cookies from Tesco), which rather adoringly had not chocolate chunks, but chocolate stars, these were smaller but made up for it by having an extra few in the bag. My favourites were the Bounty cookies (£1 for 4 from Tesco), which were large, packed with chocolate chunks and full of coconut. A Bounty bar is too coconutty for me, but this was just the right amount, not too sweet either. I’d definitely buy these again.

The thing we all got most excited about was the jar of Malteser spread, chocolate spread liberally peppered with little malty Maltester balls. It’s meant to be spread on toast or slathered on pancakes or similar, but I made butterfly cakes and used it instead of buttercream.

They were a huge success, the cakes were yummy with just a nice amount of chocolatey hit. Everyone loved the little crunchy pieces of Malteser. For me it is quite sweet so I’m not sure I could eat it as a spread, but hubs who has a sweet tooth loved it and would probably spoon it directly into his mouth from the jar if I let him.

The MARS cake bars (£1.65 for 5) were soft sponge topped with chocolate and caramel were for me the slight disappointment, they were lovely and disappeared quickly once the packet was opened, but for me I love the chewy nougat in a MARS bar and I missed that in the cake bars. I would buy them again though since the boys loved them so much.

The Galaxy treat cake (£7 from ASDA) was also a hit. It serves 15 so would be great for a party or as a treat for the office. Chocolate sponge topped with chocolate buttercream and little Galaxy pieces, there is nothing even potentially disappointing about any of that. We scoffed it with some friends when they came for a play date and it was enjoyed equally by parents and children.

If you haven’t already you need to get your hands on the Malteser spread, it’s brilliant for topping cakes with and I’ll always have some in the cupboard for baking emergencies, though I may need to hide it from my greedy boys.

Note: We were sent these products free of charge for review purposes, all images and opinions are our own. Thank you to MARS for fuelling our half term fun.

Recipe: How to make a Malteser Milkshake

One of the most popular posts I’ve ever written on this blog were some recipes for peanut butter milkshakes. They were incredibly good, but they also contained a healthy slug of bourbon, which made them a bit adult. Today we fancied a sweet treat, so we raided the cupboards and made this delicious Malteser Milkshake.

Recipe: How to make a Malteser Milkshake

How to make a Malteser Milkshake

You will need –
2 scoops of vanilla ice cream
1 packet of maltesers
350mls of milk
Squirty cream

Method –
Whizz the maltesers up in a blender until they’re crumbs (but not too fine, you still want a hint of crunch). Add the ice cream and the milk and whizz up together until blended. Pour into a glass and top with squirty cream and decorate with whatever you fancy, I put a couple of maltesers aside and popped them on top.

Many hands make light work, so I enlisted the help of the small boy to help make the milkshake. As you can see from his little face he was pretty happy with his creation.

What’s your favourite flavour milkshake?

Mummy makes Cakes with Cake Angels

I’m not known for my baking skills. If a cake needs whipping up in our house, it’s usually my much more talented better half who takes up the whisk. My skills lie equally in cake decorating and cake eating.

A few years ago I went to a cupcake decorating class and learned how to pipe the icing onto cakes large and small. It is remarkably easy and can look quite effective.

I was excited when a huge goodie bag from Cake Angels was sent to me. The bag contained a large tub of chocolate fudge icing, some mini marshmallows, two packs of sugar decorations, a big variety tub of chocolate swirls and sprinkles and a couple of sets of candles.

The boys set to work exercising their baking skills. I stood well back for fear my intervention would render the cakes inedible. Once cooled I set to work with my piping bag and the decorations. I think the results are quite acceptable and the products really easy to use, even for a very amateur baker like me. What do you think?

Disclaimer: I was sent the goodie bag free of charge by Cake Angels for testing purposes, the products were easy and enjoyable to use, my reviews are always honest and unbiased.