#readcookeat recipe : Biscuit Cake (A Time For Friends)

While reading Patricia Scanlan's A Time For Friends, I spotted a few mentions of a recipe that piqued my interest :

p455 "The biscuit cake was scrumptious and he was on his second slice when the phone rang."

I'd never heard of it but it instantly sounded like a simple recipe that the Madhouse kids would like to recreate so I went and searched on google. It turns out that it's very similar to fridge cake and apparently, it's Prince William's favourite cake so they had it at their wedding reception ! There are various recipe options - some use condensed milk, some use golden syrup, some have just crushed up biscuit crumbs while others have large chunks of biscuit, optional ingredients include glacé cherries, Maltesers, mini marshmallows ... I had a rummage through the cupboards and just used what was in there.

Here's the version we made.

Biscuit Cake

ingredients :

400g milk chocolate

25g butter

2 tbsp Golden Syrup

75g dried sour cherries

250g Digestive Biscuits 

mini Smarties

200g white chocolate

Break the biscuits into smallish pieces.

Put the milk chocolate, golden syrup and butter in a bowl and melt it in the microwave.

Mix the biscuits into the chocolate so that each piece is covered.

Add the extra ingredients (sour cherries, glacé cherries, mini marshmallows, Maltesers, ...).

Press into a cake tin lined with baking parchment or foil.

Melt the white chocolate and drizzle on top.

Scatter with mini Smarties.

Chill in the fridge for a couple of hours before slicing into squares.

I was slightly underwhelmed because it just tastes of chocolate digestives really so you might as well buy a pack of the chocolate ones to begin with ! That said, the kids devoured it and it could be made better with more extras like Maltesers and mini marshmallows.

If you google "biscuit cake", you will some beautiful presentations so I think we should have another go and double up the quantities so that we get a deeper cake with more of the layered biscuit effect that that you can see in the photos. I think I prefer regular fridge cake/cornflake cakes though.

Fancing cooking the books ?! Join in with the #readcookeat challenge over at Chez Maximka

This used only odds and ends from the cupboard so I'll add it to this month's #KitchenClearout linky.