| The finished cake |
Coffee and walnut cake is definitely a firm favourite, so when we invited family over this was my go to. The combinations of textures from the soft sponge to the sugary buttercream, slightly hardened glaze and final crunch of the walnuts makes it a winner!
Recipe from Nigella's website (link to it here).
Instead of reading the introduction and suggestion to reduce the amount of coffee if using granules and water I rushed in and kept with the 4teaspoons, however I'm very happy I missed it! Using 'Douwe Egberts Pure Indulgence' instant coffee gave a lovely taste and I wouldn't reduce the amount.
Instead of using a food processor I used a pestle and mortar on the walnuts, this was time-consuming and I wouldn't recommend the technique! This created a smooth cake but I added the crunch with more walnuts on the top. Realising too late that I had no plain flour I used 200g self -raising instead and took the baking powder and bicarb out.
I halved the amount of buttercream and decided to make a coffee glaze to cover the top. I was actually glad for the added coffee flavour in this and felt it was better for it, though optionally more buttercream could have been put in the middle. I would probably make 3/4 mixture in future. I created the glaze with icing sugar, water and coffee granules though I have no idea about the amounts used, I put too much water in at first and had to keep adding more icing sugar!
My initial idea for the decoration was a beach theme, instead of over-covering the cake with decoration I used the glaze to keep marzipan seashells and starfish on. I'd left a small amount of buttercream from the assembly and created a love heart on the top and surrounded it with smaller walnut pieces.
It serves 8 but we cut it into 12, everyone said how nice the cake was, I'd definitely use this recipe again!
