Light as a feather coffee walnut cake

My parents gave me a huge bucket of fresh walnuts from their garden and immediately thought: I want to make a cake! But I find coffee walnut cakes often extremely heavy and overly sweet, but not this one! I found this one at BBC Good Food, I tweaked it a little and it turned out really great. Very light, not too sweet and slightly sour. It's an instant fav! It needs a little work, but it's well worth the effort.




What do you need?


For the cake:

1 tbsp coffee granules, plus 1 tsp
225g self-raising flour
1 tsp baking powder
50g ground almonds
85g light muscovado sugar
50g golden caster sugar
25g chopped walnuts
2 eggs , beaten
250g natural yogurt
75ml walnut oil

For the filling:

2 tbsp golden caster sugar
2 tsp coffee granules
140g mascarpone
100g Quark (you can't find this in the states, take half cream cheese, half yogurt)
2 tbsp icing sugar


For the icing:

140g fondant icing sugar
1 tsp coffee granules
1 tbsp finely chopped walnuts


Let's start with the cake!

Pre-heat oven to 180C/160C fan/gas 4. Oil and flour a 20cm round (6cm deep) loose-bottom tin.

Mix the coffee with 2 tsp warm water and set aside. Tip the flour into a large mixing bowl. Stir in the baking powder, ground almonds, both sugars (make sure there are no lumps) and walnuts, then make a dip in the centre. Put the eggs, yogurt, oil and coffee mix into the dip and stir the mixture with a wooden spoon until everything is evenly mixed. Spoon the mixture into the tin and bake for 40-45 mins, or until a skewer inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean.

Let the cake cool in the tin for 5 minutes, then turn it out and let it cool on a rack.


Time for the coffee syrup!

Put the caster sugar and coffee into a small, heavy-based saucepan, and add 3 tbsp water. Heat gently, stirring to help the sugar dissolve. Once dissolved, raise the heat, then boil at a fast rolling boil for about 1½-2 minutes until thickened and syrupy. Pour into a small heatproof bowl and set aside to cool.

The filling!

Beat the mascarpone, quark (or cream cheese and yogurt), icing sugar and vanilla together until smooth, then stir in the cold coffee syrup. Set aside.

The icing!

Sift the fondant icing sugar into a bowl. Mix the coffee with 1 tbsp warm water, stir this into the fondant icing sugar with about 1 more tsp (I needed 2) water to give a smooth, thick but spreadable icing.


I love it when a cake comes together!

Slice the cold! cake into 3, then sandwich back together with the filling. Spread the icing over the top, scatter over the chopped walnuts and leave to set. Store in the fridge.





So great!