Coffee & Walnut Drizzle Cake

Coffee & walnut drizzle cake

I haven’t actually been baking much during lockdown, which is the opposite of the majority of the rest of the population if you believe the news and the recent daily stats of this blog (thank you everyone and I hope the recipes have worked and tasted wonderful). I think this may be because I bake a lot normally, I bake cakes at least twice a week to serve at the cookery school, and normally two cakes or a cake and some biscuits for each class. This means that we always have a few slices of leftover cake lying around the house, and to be honest (I thought I would never say this) you can get a bit fed up of cake. Baking hasn’t been at the top of my list of things to do during lockdown and this is the first one I have made since 20th March. I just felt the need for cake, and that often translates into the need for coffee cake. It is one of my all-time favourites.

This one has a coffee and sugar drizzle added as soon as it come out of the oven to add that extra coffee kick and a lovely moistness. You don’t need to add this if you don’t want to and the cake is perfectly good without it. If you do go for the drizzle option then please don’t feel you need the buttercream icing on top, it’s just that in this house a coffee cake isn’t really considered finished without the buttercream. It might be overkill for you, but if the mood strikes you for coffee cake then this combination might just hit the spot.

Slice of coffee and walnut drizzle cake

175g softened butter
175g caster sugar
2 eggs
50g plain yoghurt (or use another egg)
175g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 (one-quarter) tsp bicarbonate of soda
30ml (2 tbsp) strong coffee or coffee essence
50g walnuts

Drizzle
60ml (4 tbsp) strong coffee or coffee essence
100g sugar

Frosting
75g softened butter
150g icing sugar
1 tbsp strong coffee
walnuts to decorate

Method:
Preheat the oven to 180 degrees centigrade, gas mark 4 or use the baking oven on a 4oven Aga. Grease and line a 2lb loaf tin or 20cm round cake tin.

Beat the butter and caster sugar together with an electric whisk in a large bowl until the mixture has turned pale and is fluffy. Add one egg at a time and beat well to combine. Add the yoghurt and beat well to combine. Sift the flour, baking powder and bicarbonate of soda over the mixture and fold in using a large spoon. Fold in the coffee or essence and the walnuts. Spoon the batter into the prepared tin and bake in the centre of the oven for 30-40 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean.

Whilst the cake is baking, put the ingredients for the drizzle in a small pan and heat on low until the sugar is dissolved and then raise the heat and simmer for a couple or minutes. As soon as the cake is out of the oven use the skewer to make holes all over the top and brush the coffee drizzle over the top of the cake. Leave the cake in the tin for at least ten minutes so that the drizzle can be fully absorbed. Turn the cake out onto a wire rack to finish cooling.

For the frosting, beat the butter until soft and add the icing sugar, stir gently until combined (this saves clouds of icing sugar erupting everywhere) and then whisk until fluffy. When the cake is cold decorate the top of the cake and add walnuts as final touch.

The cake will stay delicious for about three days if kept in a tin.

Coffee & Walnut Drizzle Cake Read More ยป