Red Nose Day Maltesers Cake

When I saw that Maltesers was donating £5 to Comic Relief for every cake made in their #bakeamillion challenge, it seemed like a better than usual reason to make a chocolate cake!  The devil's food cake I'd tried for Theo's birthday was so good that I didn't need much persuasion to bake it again.  The original recipe made a BIG cake.  So in the interests of all our waistlines, I halved the quantities this time.  And of course, adorned it with Maltesers.

Devil's Food Cake
Recipe adapted from Green and Black's Chocolate Recipes.  Apart from halving it, I reduced the amount of sugar and avoided mixing the cocoa with the cold water.  In my experience, all this does is give you a brown sludge which is hard to get out of the measuring jug.  I don't see how that improves the quality of the cake.

175g plain flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
pinch of salt
50g cocoa powder
200ml cold water
125g margarine or shortening
200g sugar
2 large eggs

Preheat oven to 180°C.  Sift together the flour, baking powder, bicarb, salt and cocoa.

Cream the margarine and sugar together until light and very soft.  Whisk the eggs, then add to the creamed mixture a little at a time, beating well.  Add the flour mixture alternately with the cold water to give a light airy batter.  

Scoop into a greased and base-lined 8-inch round tin, and bake for 30-35 minutes.  Leave to cool in the tin for a few minutes, then on a wire rack. Decorate as desired.