Chocolate Jack

Coming up with birthday cake ideas for adults is a tough one. For a recent birthday I wanted to continue the theme of patriotism (from the Queen's Diamond Jubilee) but add something that the recipient would love - chocolate. So I developed a Chocolate Jack. A chocolate sponge tray bake with chocolate buttercream icing, decorated with Maltesers and white chocolate buttons.

The traybake was adapted from Mary Berry's chocolate traybake recipe in her book - Mary Berry's Baking Bible. I remained pretty faithful to the recipe but added a couple of teaspoons of chocolate extract to give it a more rounded depth of chocolatey flavour. Into the buttercream icing went cocoa powder and again, chocolate extract and then the fun began - decorating. The Maltesers didn't take too long, but the white chocolate drops took ages. I wanted them as perfectly aligned as possible. After about half hour the decoration was complete. A triumph. 32 adults (fueled by chatter and lots of alcohol) lined up like kids in a sweet shop - and hey presto. It was gone!