Coffee and walnut cake

whole cake side

Coffee and walnut cake

Serves: 8
Preparation time: 20 minutes
Cooking time: 20 minutes

Ingredients

Sponge:

250g (8oz) self raising flour

250g (8oz) margarine.

250g (8oz) sugar

4 eggs

1 tablespoon instant coffee mixed in a little hot water

1 tablespoon crushed walnuts (I added quite a lot more than this, just because I had walnuts which needed to be used up)

Icing:

125g (4oz) butter

250g (8oz) icing sugar

1 teaspoon instant coffee mixed in a little hot water

Method

Sponge

Preheat the oven to 200C or gas mark 6

1. Cream together margarine and sugar in a mixing bowl.

2. Add the beaten eggs to the mixture.

3. Add the crushed walnuts.

4. Add the coffee mixed with water and stir well.

5. Fold in the flour gently.

Put equal amounts into 2 x 8″ greased round sandwich tins, bake for 20 mins at 200C/360F/gas 6

Filling

Cream together butter and icing sugar in a bowl
Add mixed coffee

Sandwich cakes together with filling leaving a little to spread on top, then sprinkle with whole walnuts. You might be able to see from my photo that I grated some white chocolate over the cake, in an attempt to get Jack to eat it, but of course it just made it even sweeter.

This is a good cake, although it is quite dense, but not heavy – if that makes sense. I was not keen on the buttercream aspect of it though, it was too sweet.

The next time I bake this one I’m going to bake it in a loaf tin and make up a coffee syrup, skewer it all over and drizzle the syrup into it. I’m also going to use pecans instead of walnuts as Jack doesn’t like walnuts. I can’t taste much difference between them, but there you go, our taste buds are all different I suppose.

This is one of the cakes which is served in National Trust tearooms. It’s the third most popular one, they sell 102,000 slices of it per year! I think I’m going to bake their biggest seller next week – can you believe that it’s Victoria sponge? They sell 171,000 slices of that in a year.

a slice of cake

This post is linked with Beth Fish Reads Weekend Cooking.

16 thoughts on “Coffee and walnut cake

    • Janel,
      I love coffee too so I added quite a bit more coffee to this cake than the recipe stated, the stronger the coffee flavour the better as far as I’m concerned.

  1. Looks fabulous – but I’m with you on the loaf w/drizzle version, though.

    I like the taste of pecans better than walnuts (my southern heritage, perhaps?), but walnuts give better texture.

    Last Wednesday I made my annual St Patrick’s Day Stout chocolate stout cake (actually semi-annual, since Bud likes it so much that it’s his birthday choice now too.) Did cupcakes this year so I could share it out at the office – don’t like to keep sweets around the house longer than necessary…

  2. This looks fantastic! Wow. And one of the things I miss about the UK is a basic everyday sponge. I know I could make my own, but … And I, too, love your dishes.

    • Beth F,
      Baking is one thing which I think is done well here, and especially so in the west of Scotland I think. Bakery shops never seem to go bankrupt here! I wish I had bought two sets of those dishes, sadly there have been quite a few breakages over the years.

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