COFFEE & WALNUT CAKE.

What is going on with me lately? Every cake that I appear to be baking recently is super old school and nothing new to the party but a firm favourite in my eyes none the less. Last up on the blog we had Carrot Cupcakes and now I am back with another traditional recipe in the form of this delectable Coffee and Walnut cake.

I'm not sure why I was eating caffeine based cakes as a child but I very much remember sitting down with my Grandma to have a cup of afternoon tea and tucking into a slice of this cake and theres just something really comforting about recreating this now as an adult. And hell, anything with coffee in it is a guaranteed winner for me these days.

YOU WILL NEED:

CAKE: 250g of softened unsalted butter, 250g caster sugar, 4 lightly beaten medium eggs, 3 TBSP strong espresso, 250g plain flour, 1 TSP baking powder and 75g of roughly chopped walnuts. 

ICING: 200g very soft unsalted butter, 300g icing sugar, 1 TSP vanilla essence, 3 TBSP strong espresso, 150g walnut halves. 

METHOD:

Start off by preheating your oven to 180°C and lightly grease 2 8inch tins before lining with baking parchment. Once you have weighed out and prepared all of you ingredients put the butter and sugar into a large bowl and beat using a handheld of stand mixer for 3 minutes until pale and fluffy. Gradually add the eggs, beating after each addition (if the mixture looks like it is curdling add a few tablespoons of the flour). Once the espresso is room temperature add it to the mixture. Sift over the flour and baking powder and then fold it in with a large metal spoon before adding the chopped walnuts. Now that your mixture is complete you need to evenly divide the mix into the 2 cake tins and bake for 30 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean. Once baked leave the cakes in the tins to cool for 5 minutes before removing them and leaving them to cool completely on a wire rack. For the icing put the butter, icing sugar, vanilla essence and coffee in a large bowl and beat until soft and smooth. Use the icing to sandwich the cake together, then spread the remainder over the top and sides of the cake. To finish finely chop the walnuts and press them into the side of the cake before transferring to a cake stand or plate. 

TIPS:

Make sure that you use a really strong coffee, I used a Nespresso Volluto which is an intensity 4 and despite the fact it was delicious you could most certainly go stronger with this one. I am a coffee fiend though so keep that in mind when picking an espresso to suit you. Also, pressing finely chopped walnuts into the sides is not as easy as it sounds, I found using a spoon and then pressing them into place with the back off the spoon made the whole process a lot quicker and gave a much better coverage than attempting it by hand. 

As always, let me know if you plan on giving this one a try and what you think!