My daughter loves to bake. Cakes, sponges, biscuits, buns, we’ve had elaborate three tier sponges held together with oodles of sickly icing and doodlebugs from a recipe passed down through the generations. This need to bake has been nurtured by me, I make no apologies for that. When she was a wee baby sitting on the floor by my feet, I would be mixing and measuring while she emptied my cupboards of bowls and cookie cutters. As she grew, her highchair would be pushed to the worktop and she’d mix her creation of flour and raisins. Her favourite book was Debbie Browns 50 Easy Party Cakes. A beautiful wooden kitchen was her prized fourth birthday gift. As the years pass, the paraphernalia has grown, an ice cream maker here, a cake turntable there. Cake skewers, palette knives, multicoloured measuring cups – all lie side by side with my grown up collection of silver cutlery. She devours recipe books at bedtime while her brothers listen excitedly to Harrys adventures at Hogwarts.

I love how she’s taken recipes that I’ve made for years and turned them into her own. This chocolate malteser cake is an example of such. I first made this back in the winter of 2004; the winter where our excitement of learning we would be first time parents will forever make my memories of that christmas all shiny and magical. In enthusiastic celebration, I tore through the pages of my newest Nigella book and fell upon this beauty of a cake with its ramshackle crown. It looked like a celebratory cake if ever I saw one. And so began my families love affair with a malty sponge – every birthday it is requested, every whiff of a special occasion it is asked for. The recipe pages bear the marks of a hundred makes and I treasure it all the more for it. It has fallen on my daughter to now carry on this tradition and she carries it well, expertly covering the mixer with a tea towel to avoid the puff of icing sugar as it mixes, always remembering to open the kitchen window when she ices so as its not too hot. My jazz has been replaced by some flash-in-the pan pop princess, my apron remains on the peg. But the dirty dishes are still there. We’re working on that…

For the cake you will need:

• 150g soft light brown sugar
• 100g caster sugar
• 3 eggs
• 175ml milk
• 15g butter
• 2 tablespoons horlicks
• 175g plain flour
• 25g cocoa, sieved
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon bicarb of soda

1. preheat your oven to 170c/150c fan/gas 3
2. butter and line two 20cm loose bottomed sandwich tins with baking paper
3. whisk together the sugars and eggs
4. heat the milk, butter and horlicks powder in a saucepan until the butter melts, and it is hot but not boiling
5. when the sugars and eggs are light and frothy, beat in the hot horlicks mixture
6. fold in the flour, cocoa, baking powder and bicarb of soda
7. divide the cake batter evenly between the two tins and bake in the oven for 25 minutes until risen and springy
8. let them cool for 5-10 minutes and then turn out of their tins

For the icing you will need:

• 250g icing sugar (lots!)
• 1 teaspoon cocoa
• 45g horlicks
• 125g unsalted butter
• 2 tablespoons boiling water
• 2 x 37g packets of maltesers

1. put the icing sugar, cocoa and horlicks in a food processor and blitz to remove lumps
2. add the butter and process again
3. stop, scrape down, and start again, adding the boiling water until you have a smooth buttercream
4. sandwich the cold sponges with half of the buttercream, and ice the top with what is left
5. add the maltesers in whichever pattern takes your fancy!

And enjoy! Do you have a favourite recipe in your home? Perhaps your children now make them for you? I’d love to hear of them! Thanks for reading x