Coffee flavoured cake with coffee frosting

This cake is all about coffee. The coffee flavour in this cake will sweep you off your feet and kickass at the same time. It is so laden, bursting with coffee. I used the absolutely brilliant recipe on pioneerwoman’s blog and it worked perfectly. The coffee frosting is another beauty. It ratchets up the coffee factor even more until you’re swimming in a coffee river in coffee land.

I love coffee flavoured anything. Oddly I don’t drink coffee daily but I absolutely love coffee flavour. Coffee is one of the few things everybody agrees on at home and I didn’t want to make another chocolate cake for the occasion, so coffee flavoured cake was just perfect. Oh, I haven’t told you what the occasion was. It was my mother-in-law’s birthday and everybody knows how important it is, even more important than the husband’s. She liked the cake and said it tasted good and that’s the highest praise that is bestowed at our place. So I am pretty happy with that.

The cake was pretty straight forward. The coffee is heated up with the melted butter for just a few seconds and that renders it a heavenly nutty, coffee aroma that’s just intoxicating. The cake batter is quite runny, don’t panic. I baked the cakes in 2 8-inch pans. You could use 9 inch pans as well. Whatever you do, make sure to line your pans with parchment paper/butter paper. These cakes are extremely sticky.  If you’re racking your brains for a cake other than chocolate, look no further. Make this coffee flavoured cake today.

Prep time: 20 mins

Baking time:  35-40 mins

Makes: 10-12 slices

Ingredients - Cake

All purpose flour/Maida – 2 cups

Sugar – 2 cups

Salt – ¼ tsp

Butter – 225 gm

Instant Coffee crystals – 3 tablespoons

Boiling water – 1 cup

Buttermilk – ½ cup (make your own by adding 1 tsp vinegar to ½ cup milk. Let stand for 10 minutes before using)

Eggs – 2

Baking soda – 1 tsp

Vanilla – 2 tsp

Ingredients – Frosting

Butter – 175 gm

Icing sugar – 250 gm

Instant coffee crystals – 2 tbsp

Hot Boiling milk – 1 tbsp

Salt – ¼ tsp

Method

1.      Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Grease and line 2 8-inch or 2 9-inch round pans with parchment paper. Set aside.

2.      In a bowl, sift flour. Add sugar and salt, whisk together and set aside.

3.      Melt butter in a pan.

4.      Add the 3 tbsp coffee crystals to 1 cup of boiling water. Let dissolve completely. Add this coffee mixture to the butter and heat for 10-15 seconds. Switch off and let cool.

5.      In a separate bowl, add buttermilk, eggs, baking soda and vanilla and beat well.

6.      Pour the butter-coffee mixture into the flour mixture and mix well. Then add the egg mixture and beat just until blended.

7.      Divide the cake batter between the 2 pans equally. Bake in the preheated oven for 35-40 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the centre comes out clean.

8.      Remove from oven and let cool in the pan for 15 minutes.

9.      Meanwhile prepare the frosting. Add coffee crystals to 1 tbsp boiling milk (switch off stove before adding coffee) and stir until it’s completely dissolved.

10.   Beat butter till pale. Then add the icing sugar about a ¼ cup at a time and beat on high till the sugar is completely incorporated and you’re unable to feel any sugar crystals when you rub a small bit of frosting between your fingers. Continue adding sugar in ¼ cup increments till the frosting is thick and spreadable/pipable. Add salt and coffee mixture and beat till thoroughly incorporated.

11.   Invert the cooled cakes onto 2 separate plates and peel off the parchment paper.

12.   Place one cake on the serving plate. Place a large dollop of frosting on the cake and use an offset spatula to spread the frosting around. Once done, place the other cake layer over this one. Repeat with the rest of the frosting till the top and sides are covered.

13.   Pipe roses/stars or whatever you fancy over the top of the cake. You could just make pretty waves, swirls with your spatula as well. I mixed in about 4 tbsp cocoa powder to about a ¼ cup of the coffee frosting to create a darker coffee hue and used it to pipe roses and stars on top of the cake.