Last week it was a very special person's birthday, my mum, so of course I had to make her a birthday cake. She loves coffee cake, so I grabbed my favourite recipe book from the shelf (which I actually 'acquired' from her). It's called 'The Love of Cooking', and was published in 1972. It is very dog-eared, but I love it all the same, and it has some of my most trusted recipes.
I wanted to make a nice, simple but delicious cake, so I adapted a recipe from the book and here was the finished result:
The recipe and method was as follows:
200g butter
200g caster sugar
4 eggs
200g self-raising flour
4 teaspoons instant coffee (I just used coffee mixed with a drop of hot water, but by all means just use coffee flavouring-I suggest adding more or less coffee to suit your personal tatse)
If desired, you could also add around 50g chopped walnuts
- Pre-heat oven to 180C and grease and line a 7cm round tin (you can split the mixture between 2 tins, or bake in one and cut in half once it's cold to fill - again it's down to personal taste!)
- Cream butter and sugar with coffee flavouring until light and fluffy
- Beat in eggs one at a time, adding a tablespoon of flour with each
- Fold in the rest of the flour
- Bake near centre of oven for around 20-25 mins until golden
For the icing, I made a simple coffee flavour buttercream, which as usual I just threw together until it looked (and tasted!) right. By estimation I think I used around about the following amounts:
- 125g butter
- 250g icing sugar
- 2tsp coffee flavouring
