Coffee sponge with walnut pieces made with light brown sugar topped with a sweet coffee butter cream!
I personally use Douwe Egberts strength 4 for the coffee but whatever you have on hand is fine!

RECIPE

CAKE

• 175g Self raising flour.
• 175g Light brown sugar.
• 175g Stork margerine.
• 3 large eggs.
• 50-100g Walnuts depending on preference. 50g will give an average amount where 100g will be quite dense with walnuts.
• 2 tsp of instant coffee, dissolved in a very little hot water.

Topping

• 150g Unsalted butter.
• 350g Icing sugar.
• 2 tsp of instant coffee, dissolved in a very little hot water.
• 25-50g Walnuts.

METHOD

Cake

• Baking temperature is gonna be trial and error for your own oven as all are a little different but for mine, I pre heat the oven to 170c for my fan assisted oven.
• Cream the margarine and sugar together in a bowl.
• Next, make a gap in the bowl and crack the 3 eggs in.
• Give them a little mix to combine the yolks and whites, then combine with the rest of the mix.
• Once done, you should have a smooth mix.
• Add the coffee and mix again until combined.
• Add the flour and combine.
• Roughly chop the walnuts and fold in.
• Split the mix evenly between 12 cupcake cases.
• I find 2 level scoops of a “small” ice cream scoop does the trick for me.
• Bake for 16-18 minutes until baked.
• You can do it by feel, as you can feel if it’s sufficiently spongy but you can’t go wrong with the tried and tested skewer method by poking a cake to the middle with a skewer and see if it comes out clean.

Topping

• Beat the butter in a food mixer.
• Add the coffee and combine.
• Sieve in the icing sugar and combine.
• You may need a little extra icing sugar depending on how much water you used in the coffee. I accounted for this in the recipe but add a little more icing sugar if the coffee buttercream is too thin.

Construction

• Pipe the buttercream on to the cakes.
• Rough chop half of the walnuts and sprinkle on top.
• Fine chop the other half and sprinkle on top.