Chocolate Biscuit Birthday Cake

Contributor Jane McMorland-Hunter shares a no-bake birthday cake recipe inspired by her school days.

Note from Miranda: as June is my Mum’s birthday month (as well as Jane’s!), I’m sharing this specially commissioned recipe as a free post, accessible to all my followers. I hope you enjoy it! Thank you as always to those of you who are paid members; there wouldn’t be any content without you ❤️

When I was a child I adored Enid Blyton’s Famous Five and Malory Towers series. If I’m honest I still love them. For years I lived in a fantasy world where I had a dog and solved mysteries. When I came to go to boarding school my parents warned me that it might not be like Malory Towers, the series which followed Darrell Rivers and her friends through the ups and downs of school life.

They were wrong! Apart from one or two details I found myself at Malory Towers. Years later I discovered the reason; Enid Blyton’s daughter had been at the school (Benenden School in Kent) and the stories were based on her daughter’s descriptions. The discrepancies, such as the seaside setting, were explained when I discovered that, during the Second World War, the school had been evacuated to Newquay in Cornwall.  

We had midnight feasts, adventures and everything you could wish for from a boarding school, I suppose we also did some work. One of the regular highlights were Birthday Teas, which always featured a huge cake from the village bakery. Chocolate Biscuit was always my favourite.

Sally and I included a recipe for the cake in our book Cherries and Mulberries: Growing and Cooking, published by Prospect Books in 2018 but we have since tweaked it and I think this version is much better. It is very rich, very chocolatey and utterly delicious. 

This cake is small but a little goes a long way. A 15 cm / 6 inch tin should feed 6. As it is not cooked, it is very easy to scale up or down; just multiply the ingredients as necessary. The size of tin doesn’t really matter either; you can make a smaller, taller cake or a flatter, larger one according to the tin you have.  

Chocolate Biscuit Birthday Cake

Cake (amounts for 15 cm / 6 inch cake)

140 g / 5 oz milk chocolate

110 g / 4 oz unsalted butter

1 tablespoon full fat milk 

225 g / 8 oz digestive biscuits

60 g / 2 ¼ oz raisins or dried fruit of your choice. For schoolgirl authenticity, the cake should not have dried fruit but it prevents an overdose of choclateyness.

Icing:

50 g / 1¾ oz butter, softened

100 g / 3½ oz icing (confectioners’) sugar

1 teaspoon / tablespoon Horlicks or Ovaltine powder (any malted milk powder) 

1 teaspoon / tablespoon cocoa 

(the quantities of malted milk powder and cocoa are flexible. More cocoa will give a richer icing, more malted milk powder a sweeter one. I like a tablespoon of malted milk powder and a teaspoon of cocoa but I have a very sweet tooth)

2-3 teaspoons boiling water

Decoration:

Maltesers / Smarties / chopped fruit and nuts according to preference and the age of your eaters

Method:

1/ Lightly grease a 15 cm / 6 inch cake tin and line the base with baking paper.

2/ Put the chocolate, butter and milk in a bowl over a saucepan of simmering water. Stir occasionally until melted and combined.

3/ Crush the digestive biscuits. You can use a processor or put the biscuits into a plastic bag and bash them with a rolling pin (the latter is more fun). You want a mix of crumbs and smallish chunks. If the chunks are too large the cake won’t hold together. Put the crushed biscuits into a large bowl, add the melted chocolate mixture and mix well so all the biscuit pieces are coated in chocolate.

4/ Spoon half the biscuit mixture into the tin and press down well. Spread the raisins or dried fruit evenly over the cake. Add the rest of the biscuit mixture and press down firmly ensuring it gets right to the edge of the tin. Put in the fridge to cool and set.

5/ Remove the cake from the tin. 

6/ For the icing, sieve the icing sugar if necessary (i.e. only if there are large lumps, I don’t usually bother) into a large bowl and add the butter. The larger the bowl the better as the icing sugar will fly everywhere. Mix gently at first and then beat until it is soft and creamy. 

7/ Mix the malted milk and cocoa powder together and gradually add boiling water until you have a stiffish paste. Less is more here, you need to drip the water in as you are aiming for a paste, not a puddle. Too liquid and the icing will be too soft. Let the paste cool a little and mix it into the butter icing. 

8/ Spread the icing over the top of the cake and decorate with sweets or dried fruit and nuts. If you do this while the icing is still soft they will stick better. Decorate the cake as appropriate for the occasion; it seems a shame to only use it for birthday cakes, unless you have a lot of friends with birthdays spread conveniently throughout the year.

9/ Put the cake in the fridge for at least half an hour to set, if you can leave it overnight it will be better. 

Note on recipe from Miranda: I have filmed myself making this cake, which you’ll be able to see in my upcoming YouTube vlog this Thursday. I used a mix of dried sour cherries and freeze-dried cherries for my fruit mix, which I stirred in throughout the cake. I also added a bit of kirsch for a more grown-up birthday cake. Look out for the video to see my slight variations, but the original is delicious too!

Jane McMorland Hunter writes and edits books on the good things in life; gardening, nature, cookery, craft and books. Many years ago she went to work at Hatchards Bookshop, London, as a part-time Christmas temp, where she has remained, on and off, ever since. 

In between she gardens, makes patchworks and plays with papier mâché. She lives in a small house in west London which has a small garden overflowing with plants. The even smaller summerhouse is where most things happen.

Find Jane McMorland Hunter on Instagram: @alittlecitygarden 

Article photographs © Miranda Mills