Maltesers are dangerously addictive. I find it near impossible to open a sharing bag and not guzzle the lot at top speed – sharing chocolate is a real struggle for me! So imagine my surprise when I bought a couple of sharing bags of Maltesers to use in mini cupcakes with the kids and then didn’t get round to making them for a couple of weeks and they sat there huddled together in the pantry with their packets completely intact! Practically a miracle.
This activity was a reward for Atticus last week as his swimming lesson was cancelled. He was very upset; a reaction which I had failed to foresee as up until recently he has always had a somewhat ambivalent attitude to his swimming lesson. He went and behaved beautifully for the crèche ladies and played nicely with his sister so I wanted a tangible well done treat.
We started making these quite late on a school night. This made me feel somewhat rebellious as I had it in my head that I should have been preparing dinner so the kids would get to bed on time. As we made them randomly after swimming, I was unable to carve out time to ice them the way I wanted for a couple of days. This meant I was frantically guarding their Tupperware box to prevent any sneaky children (please read husband here too) pilfering them before they had been adequately adorned. In case you were worried (I doubt you were, but anyway), they only ended up in bed 10 minutes later than planned on the night we made them and Simon only managed to sneak a couple out of the tub before they were iced.
Ophelia, it turns out needs further practice with the piping bag. This is not surprising as she is only two. It was rather funny to see her reaction when she had a go; the icing missed the cake and also came out of the top. However, she was in her element putting a single Malteser on top of each decorated cake.
Oh and also popping some into her mouth and also trying to eat the icing that was being piped. She did manage to get a beautifully sticky handprint on my cake dome in her eagerness to access further chocolatey goodness. I did what any good parent did, and shared mine with her, told her she had to wait until we collected ‘her boys’ (notice they are not my boys!) from school. This went down like a lead balloon- not surprising really!
Ingredients
Makes 30 mini cupcakes or 15 larger cupcakes
For the cakes
- 180g dark brown muscovado sugar
- 135g self-raising flour
- 1tbsp cocoa powder
- 1tbsp malt powder (eg Horlicks)
- Pinch of salt
- 125g margarine
- 1 medium egg
- 1/2tsp vanilla extract
- 50g melted dark chocolate
- 110ml whole milk
- 60g milk chocolate/milk chocolate chips
- 2 sharing bags of Maltesers (1 inside each cupcake or a couple inside each larger one and 1 each for decoration on the icing)
For the icing
This is enough to ice 15 larger cupcakes, and nearly all 30 mini cupcakes
- 100g margarine
- 120g icing sugar
- 100g melted milk chocolate
- 2tbsp cocoa
Method
- Preheat the oven to 170°c fan and put the cupcake wrappers into the muffin trays.
- Gently mix the sugar, flour, cocoa powder, malt powder, and salt in a bowl.
- Add the margarine and beat with electric mixers. It may look lumpy, this is fine.
- Add the egg and the vanilla and beat again.
- Mix in the melted chocolate chips and mix to fully combine.
- Pour in the milk and mix until you have a smooth batter.
- Half fill each cupcake case and then add a Malteser(s) and then evenly distribute the remaining batter.
- Bake little mini cupcakes for 20-25 minutes and the larger ones for 30-35 minutes until a skewer comes out clean.
- Allow to cool fully before icing.
- Once cooled, beat the icing ingredients except the melted chocolate until smooth. Add the melted chocolate and beat again. The icing will need to be relatively thick if you wish to pipe it and have it remain rigid (you may need to add more icing sugar), but if you just want to spread it on, that is not so important.
