Coffee and Walnut Cake

Two months into setting up The Little Yellow Book and I've finally posted a recipe to my favourite cake: coffee and walnut cake. I have absolutely no idea why it has taken me so long to make this for the blog, but here it is! This cake is beautifully moist and I personally think the coffee buttercream is the best bit - and I'm not overly mad on buttercream or icing, so that is definitely saying something!

Ingredients 

For the cake 

225g unsalted butter, softened
225g caster sugar
4 free range eggs
225g self-raising flour, sifted
½ tsp baking powder
3tbsp instant coffee granules
5tbsp hot water
a splash of milk

For the buttercream

150g softened butter
400g icing sugar, sifted
a splash of milk
3tbsp instant coffee granules
5tbsp hot water
chopped walnuts

Method 

Coffee cake

1. Preheat your oven to 180ºC and line two sandwich tins with butter and flour. 
2. Make up the coffee using 3 tablespoons of coffee with 5 tablespoons of hot water and leave it to cool down.
3. Cream together the butter and sugar until smooth.
4. Add the egg one by one, with a tablespoon of flour between each egg and mix together. Also add the baking powder at this stage.
5. Add your splash of milk and the cooled coffee. I would suggest adding your coffee bit by bit and checking the consistency of the batter - you don't want it to be too wet. 
6. Once you're happy with your cake mixture, divide it between the two prepared cake tins and bake in the oven for 25 minutes. 
7. After 25 minutes, check that the cakes have baked all the way through by inserting a skewer or a fork and checking that it comes out clean. Take them out of the oven and leave to cool and make your coffee buttercream.

Coffee buttercream

1. Firstly make up your coffee using 3 tablespoons of coffee with 5 tablespoons of hot water and leave it to cool down.
2. It will be easier, and quicker, to make your buttercream in an electric mixer, but you can definitely make it with a wooden spoon. You will need to mix your butter until it goes pale and smooth. 
3. Next you'll need to add your icing sugar in stages so that it doesn't go everywhere when you mix it! Add in the icing sugar bit by bit and mix together. Add a tiny splash of milk to bring it together.
4. Finally add in the cooled coffee, bit by bit so that your icing doesn't get too wet, but if it does, don't worry - add in more sifted icing sugar. In fact, it's probably best to experiment with how much coffee you add in, depending how strong you want the flavour to be.
5. When you're happy with the coffee buttercream, slice the cooled cakes in half so that you can layer up the cake. You can always just keep it as a sandwich cake if you prefer. 
6. Place your first cake layer onto your serving plate and smooth a quarter of the icing over it. I was quite stingy with the buttercream for the first couple of layers (as you can see in the second photo), but don't be - I definitely had enough to have equal amounts of buttercream in between each layer. Layer up the cake with the buttercream and if you like you could add some chopped walnuts in between the layers.
7. Smooth some buttercream on the top of the cake and sprinkle some chopped and halved walnuts on the top and serve! 

Can you tell I was worried about running out of icing at the beginning?!

I hope you like this recipe - it goes perfectly with a cup of tea!