I almost didn’t bake my own Mother a cake for her birthday. How bad is that? I bake cakes almost every day but after tasting 90 varieties of cake and bread at a charity Bake Off on Saturday I just couldn’t muster the energy or in fact, any love for sugar at all. I thought I was ill. More fatigued in hindsight.
To anyone thinking of ever trying 90 mouthfuls of baked delights in one day I’d advise you to have a seat handy. After the first 20 minutes the sugar hits you and your legs begin to wobble, then you feel a little dizzy, then dry mouthed. You get a second wind though. We all tried every cake or bread. A triumph of cake over common sense.
These Mars chocolate cupcakes are for my Mum’s birthday. They are inspired by the Mars Bar fridge cake she taught me to make as a 5 year old. The very fridge cake that won me a Blue Peter badge. You’ll notice that recipe is absent on the blog. I’ll share almost anything with you, but I draw the line at that.
Makes 12
Ingredients:
- 2 large eggs at room temperature
- 80mls milk (semi or whole)
- 100mls sunflower oil
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 100g plain flour
- 25g ground almonds
- 25g cocoa powder – the good stuff
- 125g caster sugar
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 3 Mars Bars
Preheat your oven to gas 5/190C. Make sure the rack is in the centre of the oven. Pop 12 cupcake cases into a 12 hole tray. Separate the eggs, place the yolks into a jug and add the milk, sunflower oil and vanilla extract. Mix with a fork to break up the eggs.
Weigh out the flour, almonds, cocoa powder, caster sugar and baking powder into a bowl. Stir well until combined then give the jug of oil and milk and yolks a good last whisk with the fork and add to the dry mixture. Beat with a metal spoon until well combined – it will be very wet at this point.
Whisk the egg whites by hand/electric mixer until stiff. Add two tablespoons to the mixture you’ve made and beat in with some force to ‘loosen’ the mixture. This makes it easier to fold in the rest of the egg whites. Then simply fold in the rest of the egg whites using a metal spoon and a slicing action – you don’t want to knock air out of the mixture by beating it with force.
Once the mixture is combined and you can’t see any egg white pour the lot back into the jug and then fill your cupcake cases from the jug. The batter is pretty liquid so I find this the best way to get as much batter into the cases as possible. Fill each case to about halfway and then bake for 15 – 20 minutes until risen and a toothpick comes out of the centre of the middle cake clean. Remove from the tin and cool on a wire rack. Pop one of the Mars Bars in the fridge at this point.
Once the cakes are cool, cut the remaining two Mars Bars up into about 6 pieces, place in a bowl and microwave in 10 second bursts (mine took 50 seconds) until molten. Then you need to work fast as the toffee re-sets quickly. Take two teaspoons and with one scoop up a teaspoon of molten Mars Bar, with the other shove it off the first spoon onto the cake. Don’t touch the molten Mars Bar! It’s hot and it hurts.
Once every cake is equally covered in molten Mars Bar, remove the other Mars Bar from the fridge, cut into 12 slices and place on top of each cake. Wiggle the slices down a bit to spread the icing a little. Leave to cool and enjoy with milk.
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