Coffee and Walnut Cake

Ingredients

• 225g self-raising flour
• 225g caster sugar
• 225g unsalted butter
• 150g chopped walnuts
• 100ml espresso or strong coffee
• 4 eggs
• For the icing:
• 250g unsalted butter
• 200g icing sugar
• 4 tablespoons very strong coffee (4 teaspoons of instant coffee)

Preparation Time: 20 minutes
Cooking Time: 35 minutes
Serves: 12

Method

1. Brew the coffee and allow it to cool.
2. Heat the oven to 170°c.
3. Put all of the ingredients except for the walnuts and the coffee into a large mixing bowl.
4. Mix the ingredients together until there are no lumps, then add the walnuts and mix them in so that they are evenly distributed.
5. Pour in the coffee and stir it until it is thoroughly combined.
6. Pour the cake batter into 2 greased cake tins lined with greaseproof paper.
7. Put the tins into the oven for 35 minutes.
8. To make the coffee buttercream, place the soft butter and icing sugar into a bowl and using an electric whisk, whisk the butter until its light, fluffy and almost white in colour. Then add in the cooled coffee.
9. Whisk the coffee in to the buttercream. Depending on how much coffee flavour you like, you could add more coffee at this stage. Generally the amount of coffee you put into the buttercream should match the amount in the cake so that there is not a huge contrast.
10. When the cakes are cooked, remove them from the oven and allow them to cool in the tins for 10 minutes. Then remove them from the tins and transfer them to a cooling rack and allow them to completely cool to room temperature.
11. Put one of the cakes onto a plate, spread half of the buttercream onto it, then put the other cake on top of it and spread the remaining buttercream over the top. You can then finish decorating the cake in any way you like, we opted to put a walnut on to each of the blobs of buttercream we piped around the edge of the cake.
12. Cut into slices and serve.

Back to top

Useful Information

Can it be frozen? Yes, but only the cooked cakes at stage 10.
Can it be prepared in advance? Yes, it can be finished up to 1 week in advance.
Will leftovers be nice? Yes, for up to 1 week.

Notes