Soph has had an itch to bake since last weekend, so today we’re having cake for pudding! She’s gone for coffee & walnut cake from Mastering Baking (p138). It’s a melt & mix cake, which makes things easy for a Friday night, and gets topped with coffee buttercream and more walnuts. Mmm…

For the cake:

• 125ml skimmed milk
• 75 butter
• 1 tbsp instant espresso coffee
• 110g golden caster sugar
• 60g chopped walnuts
• 1 large (US extra large) egg, whisked
• 150g self raising flour

Milk, butter & coffee goes in a pan until the butter melts and coffee dissolves, then take of the heat. Stir in the sugar and walnuts, then the egg. Stir in the flour.

The mix goes into a 1kg loaf tin sprayed with oil, and lined with a parchment sling.

The recipe called for 40 minutes at 160C… which assuming the book isn’t giving fan temperatures seemed low to us, so we went for 160C fan. As you can see that worked out fine!

It smells amazing! Unfortunately it’s got to cool completely before we ice then eat it…

For the coffee buttercream icing:

• 100g butter
• 160g icing sugar
• 1 tsp coffee
• 1 tsp boiling water

Mix the coffee and boiling water, and leave to cool. Beat the butter until soft, add the sugar, then the coffee mix.

This goes on the cake, then some walnut pieces added.

Unsurprisingly it’s delicious! The cake is lovely and moist, with a good walnut taste and a nice crusty top. The cake itself doesn’t have much coffee flavour, but the icing makes up for this, and is a lovely creamy contrast to the crisp top of the cake.