High Protein Malted Chocolate Loaf Cake with Peanut Butter Icing

Prep times: 40 minutes (plus cooling)

Cook time: 40 minutes

Serves: 10

My neighbour looks after her 80+ year old father and she mentioned to me that she’s struggling to get him to eat any protein. This gave me an idea; I know that he’s very partial to something sweet, so could I make him a tea time treat with extra protein hidden within? This is what I came up with, a malted chocolate cake where a large amount of the flour is replaced with whey protein powder, plus the addition of peanuts and yoghurt ups the protein in this sweet treat, considerably.

Icing

200g peanut butter (crunchy or smooth)

200g cream cheese

75g icing sugar, sifted

150g softened butter

Cake

120g milk chocolate chips

110g melted butter

200g golden caster sugar

50g malt extract

50g 5% fat greek yogurt

3 eggs

1 tbsp instant coffee dissolved in 100ml hot water and cooled

100g plain flour

100g vanilla flavoured whey protein powder

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

2.5 tsp baking powder

2 tbsp cocoa powder

Pinch of salt

Method

1. Start by making the icing, blend the peanut butter and cream cheese together in a food processor with 2 tbsp of just boiled water.

2. Sift the icing sugar into a large bowl and using an electric whisk, blend in the butter until creamy. Add the peanut butter mix to the bowl and whisk it all together until smooth. Chill this in the fridge either in the bowl or transferred into a piping bag, for at least 3 hours until firm.

3. Preheat your oven to 180C. Melt the milk chocolate chips in a bain-marie (a heat proof bowl resting over a pan of simmering water, bowl not touching the water) and allow to cool to room temperature.

4. In the bowl of a stand mixer, beat together the melted butter, sugar, malt extract and yoghurt. Don’t worry if it looks split, it will come together later.

5. Add the eggs, one at a time, and beat until smooth. Whilst the machine is running add in the melted chocolate and coffee.

6. Sift in the flour, whey powder, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda, cocoa powder and salt and fold until well combined.

7. Grease and line a 2lb loaf tin with parchment paper. Pour the batter into the tin to 3/4 full and smooth over with wet hands.

8. Bake for 40 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean when inserted into the centre. Allow to cool in the cake and then remove and peel away the paper.

9. Once the cake is completely cool, either pipe or spread the icing over the top of the cake using a mini spatular.