malted milk ball cake.

Hello. My name is Malted Milk Ball Cake. I was born in Baked and... I'm here to bust your diet.

Believe me, I have never made a chocolate cake (complete with frosting and all) in my life. I have never ever made a triple layer chocolate cake with tons of frosting in my life.

And now I have.

My wallet and I are still in shock over the amount of chocolate that went into the frosting (because I didn't use the one in the recipe) even after I managed to find a truly commendable one that used cocoa instead of chocolate. Confused? Okay, let's start from the bottom.

Malted cake layer. Cocoa frosting. Malted Cake layer. Cocoa frosting. Malted Cake layer. Milk chocolate ganache. Maltesers.

I didn't make the a 8 inch 3 layer cake like the recipe intended. I made 2/3 of it, baking the batter in 3 7 inch layer cake pans instead.

Because I wanted to make a triple layer cake. 

Back to the frosting issues. If I had made the milk chocolate buttercream frosting, it would require 4 sticks of butter. That's 2 cups people. 2 cups! And that's not counting the amount that already went into the cake. Horror movie. Even if I halved the recipe I would still be in cholesterol shock. Wait, that's not my problem yet... My parents would get cholesterol shock. And wallet shock. So I turned to the ever reliable The Cake Bible by Rose and bingo! Milk chocolate ganache! Sure, it contains copious amounts of chocolate and cream but that's not as bad as mini mountain of butter. To me, that is.

The problem is, I didn't have enough chocolate to make enough frosting to fill and frost the whole cake. Thank goodness for the cocoa frosting! It makes a ton, so I scaled down the recipe to 1/4 of the original to fill the layers. I still have frosting leftover. Can you imagine? It totally blew my mind. I never knew chocolate frosting without chocolate could be so good! My only gripe is that the frosting was a little grainy. Incredibly cocoa-y and probably even lower in fat! But what does that matter when I've already consumed a day's fat intake in one sitting? It's sweet but not too sweet. What's frosting without sweetness anyway?

The milk chocolate ganache was faultless. Although, I should have used it to fill instead of frost. It's density toppled my slice of cake when I was plowing halfway through. I think I prefer creamy frostings. The density was a nice contrast, but...

Now let's talk cake. Cake cake. The malted cake had just egg whites, which made it so so soft right out of the oven. I just had to flip it over while it was still warm and big surprise, it cracked. Not all the way though but sort of halfway. Good going, Amanda. Luckily it was still save-able. I wrapped the cooled layers in cling wrap and tossed them in the freezer for easier frosting the next day.

There's an advantage to an all egg-white cake. The crumb just melts in your mouth. I still dream about it. But I didn't fold in the egg whites thoroughly so the cake was denser at the bottom. Unfortunately, that's where all the flavours went too. You see the difference in colours in the layers? Yup, the darker ones are the more flavorful ones. They had a nice malted flavour (duh) that wasn't too overpowering and the use of nutmeg totally works! Dig it. The lighter cake layers suffered from a lack of malty-nutmeg oomph but the frostings save the day!

I think making layer cakes are addictive. I feel like making another one next week! What are your favourite layer cake recipes? Do share!