Malted Chocolate Fairy Cakes (Wheat Free)

Happy Friday all!

Since yesterday's revelation (and the weighing scales' telling me that Christmas gave me a few extra pounds to carry around) I've decided to retrain myself into eating a little better and in a more balanced fashion. Of course, that doesn't mean I'll give up baking, but it does mean that for a little while I want to rid myself of anything tempting.

Following on from my detox, I want to start eating a little better. I have designed for myself three meal menus that I will cycle through 4 times each, which gives me a solid 12 day start to forming new eating habits. I hope to reduce my calorie intake by 300-500 calories a day, and up my exercise by 30 minutes a day. I don't want to shock my body with some ludicrous fad diet, but make small sustainable changes over a long period of time so that before long eating in a balanced way, and curbing my sweetie consumption,will become second nature.

But before that, here is today's creation: malted chocolate fairy cakes, with malted glacé icing!

The camera on my phone loves washing everything out, so I've had to exercise my leet Photoshop skillz recently. I may have to look into using a different camera, or improving my lighting. Either one.

I've always loved the taste of malt: as a child, I loved drinking mugs of Ovaltine before bedtime, and eating malted milk biscuits, which were shortbread style biscuits that had been moulded before baking to show a rural scene with grazing cows. For those who don't know, Ovaltine is a malted hot chocolate drink that is traditionally drunk to aid sleep, and it comes in both chocolate and plain varieties. I drank that plain one for the years that I had a chocolate allergy, and to be fair I preferred the plain one. When I moved to Limerick city from the countryside of West Clare, a friend of mine introduced me to a chain of restaurants called "Eddie Rockets", which are modeled on the American style burger joint diner. They sold malted milkshakes, and their strawberry malt was to die for. Nowadays, I opt for the espresso or peanut butter malt, and on days when I'm feeling particularly carefree, Oreo biscuit malt.

These were a little bit of an experiment: I decided to see if my usual sponge cake recipe works with only butter instead of a mix of butter and oil. They did, but they were much more dense and firm than my usual fluffy cakes. Doing it this way would actually be much more suitable for layer cakes, because the firm texture of the cakes makes them easier to slice and hold their shape.

For this recipe, which yielded six cakes, I used my usual sponge cake recipe using 2 medium eggs, 2 ounces of melted butter, 3 ounces of white and brown sugar combined, 3 ounces of white spelt flour, half an ounce of cornflour, 2 tablespoons of Ovaltine, 2 tablespoons of water and a pinch of salt.

I then made a simple glacé icing for them by melting 1 ounce of butter and 1 ounce of barley malt extract together in a microwave safe bowl in 20 second blasts on "Defrost", then working in 2 ounces of icing sugar until it was nice and runny. While it was still warm, I poured it onto the cooled cakes and let it comfortably glaze the cakes.

These were nice and tasty: a delicious rich malty taste, and a lovely sticky glaze. Although when I took them to my brother's house the tin wasn't big enough, and the cakes stuck to the lid; oops!

FREE FROM

☑ Soya (check for soya lecithin)
☑ Yeast
☑ Wheat

CONTAINS
☒ Cocoa
☒ Eggs
☒ Gluten
☒ Dairy
☒ Refined sugar products


THIS TIME LAST YEAR: Coffee and Walnut Gateau (Wheat Free)