SRC: Malted Chocolate and Peanut Butter Chip Cookies

It's time for Secret Recipe Club Group D reveal day again. I love the secret recipe club and it's so popular that there is a waiting list to join. Each month we are assigned a blog in secret and we then choose 1 recipe to make and blog about on the same reveal day which is today. I love discovering new blogs and always find it difficult to choose just one recipe. However, I have noticed a bit of a trend in my secret recipe posts  - peanut butter. No surprise as I love it and yes this recipe has peanut butter.

This month I was assigned The Spiffy Cookie written by Erin who is a graduate student working towards her PhD in microbiology. Erin and I have a lot in common as her favourite food group is dessert - yes! and more importantly, she says "Peanut Butter + Chocolate = one of the best combinations ever" Enough said.

Obviously I had to choose a recipe with peanut butter and chocolate and with a blog name like the Spiffy Cookie I decided it had to be a cookie and chose this delicious Malted Chocolate and Peanut Butter Chip Cookie. I ended up making a lot of changes to suit what I had to hand but I was really pleased with the final results. The cookies were chewy with a crisp edge and there was a distinct taste of peanut butter. One of my colleagues texted me to say "Your biccies (cookies) have saved our lives today. Yum Yum"

Other recipes that I've bookmarked are Nutella Chunk Cookies, Brownie Peanut Butter Cups,  Chocolate Root Beer Bundt Cake and Funfetti Truffle Chocolate Cupcakes.

 plain flour, peanut butter, chocolate malt (couldnt find my original malt), brown sugar, butter, 3 types of chocolate chips - dark, milk, peanut butter and egg 

 love the tri coloured chocolate chips

 ready to go in the oven 

 yum

 yum

The original recipe can be found here

Below is my modified version

150g butter

75g peanut butter

150g brown sugar

50g malted milk powder like Ovaltine

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

1 egg

250g plain flour

1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

110g peanut butter chips

50g milk chocolate chips

50g dark chocolate chips

• Cream butter, peanut butter, sugar and malt in an electric mixer for a few minutes.
• Add in vanilla extract and egg.
• Sift in flour, bicarb and salt.
• Finally stir in the peanut butter and chocolate chips.
• Refrigerate dough for about 20 minutes.
• Preheat the oven to 175C.
• Grease and line 2 baking trays.
• Places scoops of cookie dough spaced apart on a baking tray and bake for 8 - 12 minutes. 
• Allow to cool on the tray for a few minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely. 
• The cookies will harden on cooling - don't worry if they look soft and crumbly when you first take them out of the oven. 

Malted Chocolate Cake

It's Random Recipe time again! Dom from Belleau kitchen hosts this fabulous monthly challenge which I really enjoy as it gives me the opportunity to use my ever growing pile of books. The last challenge, we had to make the first and/or last recipe from our random book. It therefore follows that this month's challenge is to bake the recipe in the middle. I used a random number generator to select my book which is Make, bake & celebrate! by Annie Rigg. I have a few other Annie Rigg books so I was really excited to find out what I would be baking.

The book has 128 pages in total including the index so that means the recipe on page 64 is my random recipe and here it is....

 this is page 64, recipe is on page 65 which is Malted chocolate cake.

Hurrah! Love malted chocolate cake and this looks like such a pretty cake. It looks quite fancy and I started thinking if I could make this for a special occasion. As luck would have it, there was a round robin email at work later that week announcing a surprise birthday party for a colleague as it's her special birthday. Unfortunately, I couldn't go as I'd already made other plans but I immediately asked if I could bake a cake for the occasion and was met with a very enthusiastic yes especially when I mentioned the cake I had in mind :)

The only downside to this is that I did not get a chance to taste the cake as it would have been rude to present a birthday cake minus one slice!! I did get to try the frosting as there was some left over and it was delicious!! I'm just going to have to make this again so I can actually try it :) 

 I used ovaltine as my malt powder as that was all I had in my cupboard. I usually have a bag or two of maltesers so no shopping required! 

 3 layer cake - butter, sugar, eggs, buttermilk, malt powder

 chopped dark and milk chocolate for the frosting 

 cook double cream+malt powder+golden syrup until just boiling and pour on to the chocolate. 

 Add in butter, a little at a time and keep stirring to make a delicious chocolate malt frosting. 

 bottom layer 

 cover with frosting 

 sprinkle crushed maltesers on top and add second layer of cake 

 cover with more frosting and repeat for the next layer 

 frost the sides as well 

 My extremely shaky writing!! The eagle eyed amongst you will notice that the frosting is not smooth - I started writing her name but ran out of space (it won't fit) so I had to scrape it off and smooth some frosting and the covered it with lots of stars!  

 pipe small dots of frosting on the edge and on top of the cake between the maltesers. 

Addendum 24/6/12


I've just realised that 2 of the bloggers I regularly follow celebrated their birthday on Friday 22nd June So a special mention to:
Gem from Cupcake Crazy Gem
Louise from Months of Edible Celebrations

Happy Birthday to Gem and Louise - this cake is for you to share :)