Retro Recipe: Mars Bar Cake

Granny's Recipe Book

Well while we are down at Granny’s for the tattie holidays I thought I might do another retro –recipe (she’ll kill me for calling it that) from her wee hand-written cook book.  This time in celebration of Chocolate Week, another of my husband’s childhood favourites – Mars Bar Cake.

This was actually not my intended recipe for this week, but I’m including it for three reasons...

(i)     It was an easy one to make with Anna when she was bored last weekend. 

(ii)   I had intended to make Toffee Apple Millionaire Shortbread from last month’s Delicious Magazine  (I am planning to blog about recipes from my monthly subscription to force my hand at trying new things).  This didn’t happen.  I began making it on Wednesday night, the same night both my girls kept waking with bad dreams and every time I started making the caramel, one of them would wake up needing a cuddle and settling again, interrupting this process.  By midnight I gave up and went to bed myself. 

(iii) Simply because it is delicious.

It turns out that this holiday is not really a holiday for me, and without nursery and playgroup the girls are getting bored, particularly as the weather has been just awful!  We have, however, been cooking - not least this easy but tasty treat which, as you can see, my little Anna really enjoyed.

Chocolate Face!

Despite my need for rest, we have been having a good week and have even sold our flat (yippee).  My husband got back from Slovenia on Tuesday bringing with him vast quantities of continental chocolate – delicious and very apt given it is chocolate week!  It is fun to spend time with family and friends and we had an amazing day today with some lovely people including one of my best friends in the whole wide world at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh. Before our museum adventure, we went for Pizza - a great success with all the little ones eating their way through three courses!  The Museum has recently been refurbished and is a great place for children – they got to dig for dinosaurs and were very excited at all the amazing exhibits.  We will definitely be back to see all the things we didn’t get to – and it is all free!

Ingredients

2 Mars Bars

85g Margarine

85g Rice Krispies

1 (large) Tablespoon Golden Syrup

250g Chocolate to top (I used a mixture of one third dark chocolate and two thirds cooking chocolate.  You could easily increase this if you wanted an even more chocolaty topping – there was no quantity specified on the original recipe).

Method

(There was no instruction on Granny’s original recipe for the size of tin that should be used for this, so I used a Swiss Roll tin (28 x18cm)).

Grease the baking tin. Gently melt the margarine, Mars Bars and syrup in a large saucepan, add the Krispies and coat thoroughly in the Mars Bar mixture. 

Press the mixture into the tin and leave to cool. 

Melt the chocolate in a bowl over boiling water and spread over the Krispies.  Allow to cool and set properly before cutting into squares or bars.