I truly understood why Coffee and walnut cake is so delicious a few years ago when I was introduced to it by my uncle. I was getting into coffee a lot more back then and I like walnuts anyway. The two do make such great match.
For my parents anniversary about two/three years ago, I made a coffee and walnut cake and it was a total disaster, I actually made it twice and they were both flat as a pancake. It was hideous and I felt so so so deflated, we had people coming round and I didn’t know what to do? but I still had to serve it and just tell them it didn’t turn out 🙁
I later found out it was due to the self-raising flour, don’t ever buy Tesco self raining flour absolute rubbish and totally ruined my day! I do believe though that when do things wrong there’s can be positive from it. I learnt a great lesson, always use good quality self-raising and ever since that day I have! lol
So with this coffee and walnut cake (actually it was also made for my parents anniversary!!!! I just realised), I was determined not to have a flat pancake cake….I had my good quality self raising at hand and was ready to go!…yet again there was another story! Dear o dear!!!!
The first recipe I used was Nigella’s recipe, I love her recipes and I thought they will be no disasters here as her recipes usually work out right?…but I was wrong. When the cake came out of the oven the texture looked slightly odd…Her recipe uses all in one method and I feel this is where I went wrong as I don’t think the butter had incorporated properly and I didn’t want to over mix it (Nigella’s recipe cake is the one in the middle tier of the cake pictures). Eeek I felt deflated yet again, however came round two ding ding. This time I used Guardian recipe which didn’t have the all in one method and I made sure that the sugar and butter was creamed to the max!
I personally like an intense flavour of coffee in my coffee and walnut, I don’t see the point of having weak tasting coffee cake it should be strong and intense. As I wasn’t the only person having the cake I couldn’t add too much coffee which was a shame :(.
- 2 tbsp - instant coffee
- 100g - walnut halves
- 225g - unsalted butter, at room temperature
- 225g - light-brown sugar
- 4 eggs - beaten
- 225g - plain flour
- 3tsp - baking powder
- 1/4tsp - salt
- Milk, optional
- 2tbsp - instant coffee
- 165g - unsalted butter
- 425g - icing sugar
- 1/4tsp - salt
- 4tbsp - double cream (I used milk)
- 1. Mix the coffee with 1 tbsp boiling water, and then leave to cool. Meanwhile, toast the walnut halves in a dry pan until they smell toasted and nutty, then set a quarter of them aside and roughly chop the remainder.
- 2. Preheat the oven to 180°C (160C fan) and grease 2 x 20cm sandwich tins.
- 3. Beat the butter and sugar together until really light and fluffy. Whilst the mixer is running
- pour in the beaten egg mix very gradually, scraping down the sides of the mixer as necessary.
- 4. In a bowl sift flour, baking powder and salt. Then add this to the mixture and gently fold in with a large metal spoon, adding the coffee and chopped walnuts as you go.
- 5. The batter should fall, reluctantly, from a spoon; if not, add a little milk to loosen it. Divide between the 2 tins, and bake for about 25 minutes until well risen. Allow to cool for 10 minutes in the tins, then put on a wire rack to cool completely. Meanwhile, mix the 2tbsp coffee for the icing with 1tbsp boiling water and allow to cool.
- 1. Beat the butter until soft, then sift in the sugar and salt and add the cooled coffee and cream. Stir together until evenly combined. Top one cake with a little less than half the icing, spreading it more thickly in a ring around the edge, and then place the other cake on top. Spoon the remaining icing on the top, and arrange the walnuts in a pleasing pattern.
- Keep whole pieces of walnuts for decoration and use broken ones for the cake mix.
