Archive note — January 2022: This was the opening Fake Bakes experiment, based on a Tesco under-£7 challenge from January 2022. The Tesco/Asda prices and products below are historical, not current retailer comparisons.
I really wanted to name this the “Polishing a Turd Series”. The premise was to take a pre-made supermarket cake, ready-made icing and supermarket decorations and see how much visual drama I could create with very little time or money. Sensibly, we called it Fake Bakes instead.
Tight on time? No mixer? Baking disaster? This series was about fake-it-till-you-make-it decorating rather than pretending a supermarket sponge is something it is not.
The point was never to decide that one kind of cake universally tastes “best”. It was to see whether a basic ready-made cake could be made celebration-worthy in a hurry.
For this January 2022 experiment I set myself a target of under £7 and seven minutes. I bought a supermarket chocolate cake, Maltesers, ready-made chocolate frosting and chocolate spread. That particular Tesco basket came in under £7; the Asda comparison shown in the original photographs also belongs to January 2022.
Fake Bake Recipe - Chocolate Malteser Cake
Ingredients
1 ready-made round chocolate sponge layer cake (5" or 6" size)
1 tub ready-made chocolate icing
100g chocolate spread
50g Maltesers
Method
1. Prepare a cake turntable, angled palette knife, cake scraper, cake board, knife and tablespoon.
2. Unbox the cake. Smear a little frosting in the middle of the cake board, place the cake on it and remove any paper wrapping or top decorations you do not want.
3. Loosen the frosting, then spread and smooth it over the top and sides.
4. Warm the chocolate spread very gently in short microwave bursts or over a double boiler, stirring often, until it is fluid enough to drip. There is no need to target an exact temperature: stop as soon as the spread flows easily and do not overheat it.
5. Chop a few Maltesers. Decorate the top with whole Maltesers and use the crushed pieces around the base or over the top.
I did not make the seven-minute target: it took eight minutes and 49 seconds. That remains the important historical result of this first challenge.
If you want the made-from-scratch Anges version, our current Chocolate Malt Milkshake Cake is the relevant cake.
Lots of love,
Reshmi xoxo
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