0 Chocolate Malt Cake

I absolutely loved reading Christina Tosi's Milk Bar cookbook. I loved reading about the development of her recipes as well as the process of creation through necessity. I will use much of the information as inspiration for my own experiments in the kitchen.

The book was like a glimpse into the mind of a sugar-fueled pastry savant. I actually read this cookbook from cover to cover. I read the forward and introduction. I read all the head notes, side notes and foot notes. I read through a lot of the recipes too. The book is organized into sections based on what Tosi calls "mother recipes".

Even though the mother recipes are not complicated, the sheer number of different components that can go into making any final completed dessert can be a bit overwhelming.

This chocolate malt cake is a perfect example of using multiple components to create a final product. Making milk crumbs to go into the berry and cream cookies was just one tiny step beyond making cookies without the milk crumbs. Making the oatmeal cookies from scratch to grind for the crack pie crust was just one tiny step beyond using commercial cookies to grind for the crust.

This chocolate malt cake has many tiny steps. Chocolate brownie-like cake layers are soaked with malted chocolate syrup, and then layered with a malt-fudge sauce, milk crumbs and toasted miniature marshmallows to create an over-the-top mess of sweetness. Thank goodness Tosi is fine with store-bought commercial marshmallows otherwise I would've made marshmallows from scratch too.



I made this cake (all the components and the assembly too) in one afternoon which may have contributed to feeling overwhelmed. But many components can be made ahead of time which is what I should have done. I forgot to add the Ovaltine to the milk crumbs so they are a bit pale. My cake layers sunk in the middle and it was hard to cut my finished cake into neat slices. But most of Tosi's desserts are not about the way they look. It's about the taste and a childlike sugar addiction!

This cake was sweet. And chocolaty. And malty. And totally excessive which can be a good or bad thing. I actually felt a little gross after eating a small slice. But I tend to get that way when having too much Ovaltine or other malted milk products. But if you're into this kind of thing (the sweet-chocolaty-malty-excessive part not the feeling gross part) then I suggest trying it out.

Alpineberry note: I actually made this cake using a recipe on the Bon Appetit magazine website before the Milk Bar cookbook was released. So the recipe below varies from the one in the Milk Bar cookbook.


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