At first, when you hear the words Christmas Pudding Cake, you'd be forgiven for thinking this delicious festive bake would be filled with fruits and Christmas spices. But as lovely as that sounds, this particular recipe from Deborah (@nannasparks) is actually an alternative Christmas Pudding Cake and is a take on everybody's favourite: chocolate cake!

Deborah: For me, Christmas is definitely all about the giving and when we decided that our campaign for Christmas this year was called 'At Christmas, Everyone is family', it really spoke to my heart. There's nothing that gives me as much joy as making and cooking for others. I've been looking at a lot of recipes lately for Christmas food that's great to share with friends, neighbours and family and this alternative Christmas pudding looked like so much fun to make, I simply had to try it out.

Ingredients:

125g of self-raising flour

125g of caster sugar

125g of margarine

40g of cocoa powder

1/2 tsp of baking powder

3 eggs

To make the buttercream:

250g of icing sugar

50g of cocoa powder

150g of margarine

You will also need:

A small oven-roof pudding bowl, about 16cm across

Baking parchment

To decorate:

Plenty of Malteasers

100g of white chocolate

White fondant icing with food colouring or ready-made or red and green icing

Method:

Heat the oven to 180 degrees centigrade.

Put the flour, sugar, butter, cocoa powder, baking powder and beaten eggs into a bowl and mix for approximately 5 minutes, until smooth.

Grease and line the pudding basin with strips of baking parchment.

Spook the cake mixture into the basin and smooth the base - you don't want it to rise too much and you want it to be as level as possible.

Bake in the oven for about 45 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean. then turn it out of the bowl to cool on a wire rack.

When cool, slice the cake into thirds horizontally to make three layers of sponge.

Cream the icing sugar, butter and cocoa together to make the buttercream. Spread a little onto the sponges to fill and sandwich the layers together.

Spread the remaining buttercream all over the outside of the cake. Then begin to arrange the Malteasers, it's best to start around the bottom and work your way up to the top.

Melt the white chocolate over a bain-marie or in short bursts in a microwave and then drizzle over the top of the cake.

Lastly, using the fondant icing, create some holly leaves and berries to decorate the very top!

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