Week 40 Malteser and Mint Aero Traybakes

After a wonderfully relaxing long weekend away for our anniversary I had to come home and get straight back to the baking, no rest for the wicked as they say! One of my work colleagues Ruari was leaving and I had said I would make him a leaving bake. His favourite is the traditional Victoria sponge which was easy but wasn’t going to fulfil my need for a new bake for the week or feed the masses of work chums who had come to wave him off.  I needed something else that I could make quickly, easily and in bulk... step forward the traybake! You have got to love a traybake, they are super easy because you don’t actually have to do any baking at all, just some melting, mixing and chilling, perfect for a bunch of hungry workers. After some searching on Pinterest I decided to do two batches;

Malteser tray bake

http://www.nigella.com/recipes/view/malteser-traybake-393

Ingredients

• 100 grams butter
• 200 grams milk chocolate
• 3 tablespoons golden syrup
• 225 grams digestive biscuits (finely crushed)
• 225 grams Maltesers
• 200g white chocolate – I added this for a final topping layer

Method

1. Melt together the butter, chocolate and syrup then add the crushed biscuits and the Maltesers.
2. Mix together quickly then pour into a lined Swiss roll tin and chill until set (DEFINITELY make sure you line the tin or it can be a pain to get out of a cold tin. If you have line it you can just lift the whole try bake out at once and cut it on a chopping board). This only takes a couple of hours which is great and it’s actually easier to cut after a short chill, before it gets really really cold.
3. For a special occasion drizzle with some melted white chocolate. I felt the tray bake looked a bit unfinished so I covered the whole of the top with a layer of white chocolate, it took about 150-200g’s.

Mint aero tray bake

http://cookiescakesandbakes.wordpress.com/2013/04/08/aero-bubble-traybake/

Ingredients

• 100g Butter
• 200g Milk chocolate (I used 100g milk chocolate and 100g of the mint Aero chocolate bars for extra mintiness)
• 3tbsp golden syrup
• 225g Finely crushed digestive biscuits
• 225g Aero Bubbles
• 100g Melted milk or white chocolate (optional) (controversially, and very unlike me for my baking I chose to use dark chocolate for the top! The only time I really like dark chocolate is when it’s paired with mint... don’t leave me alone with a box of After Eight mints, it’s dangerous!)

  Method

1. In a large pan, slowly melt together the butter, chocolate and syrup then add the crushed biscuits and the Aero bubbles.
2. Stir together quickly then pour into a lined Swiss roll tin (DEFINITELY make sure you line the tin or it can be a pain to get out of a cold tin. If you have line it you can just lift the whole try bake out at once and cut it on a chopping board).  Using a wooden spoon, flatten it out as level as you can.  
3. If using, melt the milk or white chocolate (dark for me) and drizzle over the traybake. Chill until set. Cut into squares and watch it disappear! They really did disappear so if in doubt make double!!

After they went down so well for Ruari’s leaving do I thought I would make another Malteser batch for my friend Karlie’s birthday and I must admit while this is a super easy recipe and I have now been baking for 40 weeks, it doesn’t always go to plan!! I was rushing and trying to do far too many things at once and managed to burn all the chocolate and butter to the bottom of the pan!! It took about 4 hours of soaking and 3 attempts to scrub it off! Needless to say I had to throw it out and start again, slightly winging it because I didn’t quite have all the right ingredients left but it came together. Karlie said she enjoyed it so things worked out alright.

Moral of the story, I will make mistakes and get it wrong, but it is just baking!!! Worse things happen at sea as they say so just start again or sack it (I think that’s maybe a Scottish term, it just means give it up) and have a brew instead!

Happy eating x Linds x