Today (Thursday April 7th) marks International Coffee Cake Day! Can’t beat a nice bit of Coffee Cake and my Coffee and Walnut Cake always goes down a treat. A tearoom classic, I love a slice of this if it’s ever on the menu anywhere I go. Mr S doesn’t like sickly sweet cakes and lots of buttercream, but he loves my Coffee cake.

Another square to scratch off my #100bakeschallenge poster as well! A fifth of the way through the #100bakeschallenge now as I’ve done 20/100 of the bakes! Only another 80 to do before Christmas, eeek!

My Coffee and Walnut Cake couldn’t be simpler to make. I use two 20cm (8″) circular loose bottomed cake tins, lined with baking parchment circles. I brush my cake tins with Cake Release and this works for me every time.

For the coffee flavouring, I use Camp Coffee Essence. This is available in most big supermarkets and I have linked it to Sainsbury’s because that’s where I bought it. I have used real, strong Espresso coffee in my cakes before, but I had seen Camp in the supermarket and wanted to try it out. I would never drink it, I love the fresh stuff!

COFFEE AND WALNUT CAKE
Ingredients:

• 250g unsalted butter or spread (I use Pure Non Dairy Spread, mainly for the softness and lighter sponge)
• 250g caster sugar
• 4 large eggs
• 250g self raising flour, sifted
• 1 tsp baking powder, sifted
• 2 tbsp Camp Coffee Essence (1 for the sponge, 1 for the buttercream)
• 75g walnuts, finely chopped
• 250g unsalted butter, softened
• 500g icing sugar, sifted
• Milk to mix, if needed
• Walnut halves to decorate the top of the cake.

• Pre-heat your oven to 160oC.
• Weigh out all the ingredients for the sponge into a large mixing bowl: butter or spread, sugar, baking powder, self raising flour and one tablespoonful of Camp Coffee Essence. Mix carefully using the All In One Method with a hand held electric mixer. Fold in the chopped walnuts.
• Spoon the mixture into the prepared baking tins, dividing it equally between the two.
• Bake in the oven for 25 minutes. The cakes will be done when the sponge springs back to the touch or a skewer inserted into the cake comes out clean.
• Leave to cool in the tins for half an hour and then insert onto a wire rack.
• Meanwhile, prepare the buttercream. Whip the butter for five minutes to make it light and fluffy.
• Add the icing sugar carefully and mix together. Add the remaining Camp Coffee Essence and a little bit of milk if the mixture is too stiff. Mix thoroughly.
• When the cake is cool, remove from the tins and assemble the cake. Spread half the icing on top of one of the cakes and then put the other cake on top. Put the remaining icing on top of the cake, spreading it evenly. You could pipe the icing on but as this is a home baked, traditional cake, I go for the spreading with a palette knife option here.
• Decorate the top of the cake with walnut halves.

Useful Tips:

• As I’m a busy person, I like to take shortcuts where I can so I buy ready cut parchment circles from Lakeland. They come in various sizes and are so useful. The link is for the 20cm/ 8″ ones but you can get a mixed pack or all the same size!
• If you don’t like walnuts or are worried about nut allergies, you can always leave them out and just make a standard Coffee Cake. For the decoration I use Chocolate Covered Cocoa Beans which are widely available online and in all good baking shops.
• This cake can be fresh for up to 5 days, so long as it is kept in an airtight container.

Please note, I didn’t actually put walnuts in my cake this time. Just on the top to decorate. This was because I could only find a small bag of walnut pieces in my local Tesco last week when I was doing my weekly shop. There was a huge gap on the shelf for walnut halves so I made do with the pieces.

Happy Baking!

Love Sam xx