Coffee & Walnut Cake

With guests arriving tomorrow, I thought it might be a nice idea to bake a cake.

The Air Show weekend does tend to involve a fair degree of sitting in the garden, and refreshments are always welcome. I therefore decided to extend my baking repertoire and have a go at a coffee and walnut cake.

I used Nigella's recipe, and upscaled it to suit my two 9" baking tins. The ingredients and method are summarised here.

Ingredients

• 65 g walnut pieces
• 285 g caster sugar
• 285 g unsalted butter
• 255 g plain flour
• 5 tsp instant espresso coffee powder
• 3 and a bit tsp baking powder
• ¾ tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 5 large eggs
• 1 - 2 tbsp milk

and for the buttercream

• 440 g icing sugar
• 220 g softened butter
• 3½ tsp instant espresso coffee powder
• walnut halves to decorate

Method

1. Lightly butter two 9" baking tins and line with baking parchment
2. Pre heat the oven to 160℃ (fan)
3. Add the walnut pieces and caster sugar to a food processor and pulse it until is is a fine (ish) powder
4. Add the softened butter, flour, coffee, baking powder, bicarb and eggs, and blitz it until it forms a smooth batter.
5. While still mixing, gradually add some milk. The aim is to produce a soft dropping consistency.
6. The divide the batter between the two pans
7. Bake until the sponge springs back when pressed, or a skewer comes out clean. It took about 40 minutes for a 9" cake.
8. Once baked, leave the cake to cool in the tins for about ten minutes, before turning out on to a cooling rack.

Buttercream 

1. Pulse the icing sugar in the food processor to remove any lumps
2. Blend in the softened butter to produce the buttercream frosting
3. Dissolve the espresso powder in 1 tbsp of boiling water and, while mixing the buttercream, slowly introduce to the mixture; to produce a coffee flavoured filling and topping.

I'll let you know how it turns out tomorrow

The afternoon included a bit of hoeing in the veg patch and it's worth noting that it's not every day that a Lancaster bomber does a low level pass right over one's house. We also had a few strafing runs by the Red Arrows.