coffee cake

It was Andy's birthday this week and I wanted to bake him a cake. I bought carrots for carrot cake but when it came to making it my hands couldn't cope with the cold [I have raynauds] and after a close call with a sharp knife I decided that fridge-cold carrots to grate were not a good idea.

So I decided to go off piste and make a coffee cake instead.

ingredients - cake

150g of caster sugar
150g self raising flour
150g of butter
3 eggs
1 tbsp of [good] instant coffee
1 tbsp hot water
1 and a half tsp baking powder

ingredients - icing

Some walnuts
225g icing sugar
100g butter
1 and a half tbsp [good] instant coffee

method

Preheat the oven to 160C/325F/Gas 3

Grease and line a cake tin

Cream the sugar and butter in a bowl [or cheat like me and use the food processor]


Whisk the eggs in a mug


Add the eggs to the creamed butter and sugar in stages alongside a tbsp of flour and mix well each time you add

Add the rest of the flour and the baking powder and fold in gently

Dissolve the coffee in the hot water and add to the mixture still folding



Spoon the mixture into the tin and cook for 40-50 mins [my cooker is rubbish so it may take a bit shorter for a fan oven]

While the cake is cooking you can make the icing

Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy

Dissolve the coffee in the hot water and then add to the butter and sugar

If it seems a bit runny let it set in the fridge for a while - if you do this though you will need to let it come to room temprature again before icing the cake or else it will be so cold it won't spread easily and will tear up the cake

When the cake is done take it out of the oven to cool for five minutes then remove from the tin

Let it cool for a further five minutes before carefully removing the greaseproof paper

Cool fully on a rack before icing

While the cake is cooling, select 7 whole walnuts - one will go in the middle of the cake and the rest spaced out around it's edges

Take a handful of walnuts and chop up - not too finely as you don't want walnut dust

Ice the cake, place your whole walnuts and then scatter the chopped walnuts over the cake

Brew a fresh pot of coffee, grab a good book, put on some music and relax!

You can double the cake mixture and then divide it between two sandwish tins if you want a really big, deep cake - make sure you double your icing too though for the filling.

As you can see from the pic the cake was half gone before I got to use the camera...