Coffee Cake

Coffee cake is a family favourite and especially popular with the youngest H whose friends will sit in the kitchen delighting in it as often as I will make it. She loves a victoria sponge flavoured with coffee (good instant, expresso for preference, say 2 teaspoons dissolved in 1 tablespoon hot water) and sandwiched with coffee butter cream and topped with a coffee glaze, made with icing sugar and more of the hot coffee mixture and then walnuts for decoration. A 4 oz, 2 egg sponge baked in a shallow rectangular tin and then iced with coffee butter cream and cut into squares, each with its own walnut, is another variation on the theme.

But a proper coffee and walnut cake has walnuts inside it and I am making this one today. It can be iced with a white frosting made with egg whites and then it really is a smart teatime event and demands fine china and a fork. However, most people are wary of uncooked egg whites and I prefer using a strong coffee glaze instead. I have this recipe written on a little, stained piece of lined paper from an old style notebook, copied in a tiny hand. It was given to me by an old lady I used to know.


Coffee and Walnut Cake

6 oz softened butter
6oz castor sugar
3 eggs
8 oz SR flour
1/2 tspn baking powder
3 dessertspoons milk
1 dessertspoon hot water with 2 tspns coffee dissolved in
4 oz walnuts chopped quite finely

1. Beat sugar and butter till light and fluffy- use a processor or a hand whisk or a wooden spoon.
2. Add eggs gradually and beat in. If the mixture looks like curdling, as so often happens, add a little flour near the end.
3. Fold in the flour gently followed by the two liquids. If using a processor, pulse to blend and don't beat it again.
4. Lastly fold in the walnuts.

Put into a lined 8'' round tin and bake No 4 50 mins to 1 hour or a 7''tin for at least 1 &1/4 hours. Watch carefully near the end so it doesn't get too brown or dry. Test with a skewer to make sure it is cooked through. Ice with coffee glaze/icing sugar mixed with a little dissolved coffee or coffee butter cream or how you wish. A coating of icing sugar is really quite good enough for some!.