A good friend of mine from Murcia in Spain introduced me to this Spanish chocolate and biscuit cake, Tarta de Galletas. I’ve made this many times since and it always goes down a treat! One friend called them “pillows of loveliness” which I thought was a pretty good description of what I was aiming for.

Soaking the biscuits in milk softens them just enough that they become spongy and creates the cake-like pillowy texture. The trick is not to soak them for too long otherwise they go too soft and soggy.

I use Spanish Tostada biscuits as they have a slightly sweet, almost caramel flavour, and they’re rectangular so they’re easy to form into the layers for this cake. You can use rich tea biscuits though and you’ll get the same texture.

Desiccated coconut is the traditional topping for Tarta de Galletas, but I’m not a huge fan of desiccated coconut so I’ve gone for a scattering of dried raspberry pieces instead.

Ingredients

• 300g chocolate for melting
• 150g unsalted butter
• 150g icing sugar
• pinch salt
• 2 eggs
• 400g Tostada, Marie, or Rich Tea biscuits
• 1 pint whole milk
• 3 tbsp dark rum or brandy

Method

1. Grease a tin (I used an 18cm square tin) and line it with baking paper leaving plenty of paper hanging over the edge so that you can tease the cake out once it has set. Grease inside the paper too just to be sure. If you’ve got a square cake tin with a removable base that would be perfect.
2. Melt the butter and sugar together so that the sugar dissolves taking care not to burn the butter.
3. Keep on a low heat and add the chocolate, stirring until it melts. Once melted, take off the heat and add the pinch of salt.
4. Separate the yolks and whites of the eggs and add the yolks to the chocolate mixture. Whisk the whites until you get soft peaks and then add those to the chocolate mixture as well.
5. Heat the milk with the rum/brandy over a low heat until hot but not boiling
6. Add a thin layer of chocolate mixture to the bottom of the tin. One by one, soak the biscuits in the milk until slightly soft but keeping their shape. Arrange a layer of biscuits followed by another layer of chocolate and continue until you run out of chocolate, making sure that you end on a chocolate layer.
7. Decorate as you desire. Have some fun with it!
8. Pop it in the fridge overnight to set and then cut into pieces with a warm, sharp knife. What you do with the leftover boozy milk is up to you…