Welcome to the Cake Decorators Q&A

Hi

I’d like to make a 10inch round coffee cake, without walnuts. Can I simply omit the walnuts in a coffee and walnut cake recipe? Alternatively, does anyone have a recipe for a good strongly flavoured coffee cake? It seems a lot of coffee and walnut caek recipes ask for instant coffee, which I don’t think prodices such a strong flavour. I do have a 10inch chocolate cake recipe which calls for 65gr of cocoa powder. In that case would I replace the cocoa powder for 65gr of ground coffee , or instant coffee powder? Any help would be great thanks,

Bellscakes

Hi bellscakes

I make an ordinary Victoria sponge cake and flavour the batter with a strong espresso rather than instant coffee. I usually moisten the layers with brandy infused simple syrup and fill with espresso and vanilla buttercream. Would you be open to any other nut other than walnut? I can definitely recommend roasted hazelnuts or roasted pecans as substitute. However, if you don’t want nuts at all, a simple sponge with espresso and vanillla extract and filled with espresso and brandy frosting works. The flavour of the cake heightens the next day.

Also have a quick search online for coffee sponge cake recipes. Chiffon cake takes coffee well. Hope this helps. Happy New Year. 🙂 ps, really it is the nuts that give coffee cakes the depth in flavour.

Hi madeitwithlove

Thanks very much indeed for getting back to me. I hadn’t though of doing a victoria sponge and adding espresso. The recipient of the cake doesn’t like nuts unfortunately, he doesn’t know what he’s missing!
The 10inch round cake recipe calls for :

500 gr butter, 500 gr caster sugar, 8 medium eggs,1lb plain flour, 2.5 tsp baking powder, 65gr of cocoa powder, and 4 tblsp of milk. So if I were to follow this on for instance, how much espresso powder would you suggest please? I’ll also take a look for other coffee cake recipes though. Thanks, and a very happy New Year to you too. Thanks again.

Hi madeitwithlove

Thanks very much indeed for getting back to me. I hadn’t though of doing a victoria sponge and adding espresso. The recipient of the cake doesn’t like nuts unfortunately, he doesn’t know what he’s missing!
The 10inch round cake recipe calls for :

500 gr butter, 500 gr caster sugar, 8 medium eggs,1lb plain flour, 2.5 tsp baking powder, 65gr of cocoa powder, and 4 tblsp of milk. So if I were to follow this on for instance, how much espresso powder would you suggest please? I’ll also take a look for other coffee cake recipes though. Thanks, and a very happy New Year to you too. Thanks again.

Hi bellescakes

This is the basic recipe that I tweeked to my own taste:
https://maryberrycooks.co.uk/mary-berry-coffee-victoria-sandwich/

The recipe is for an 8” cake which can be scaled up using the CakeFlix calculator here:

Cake Calculators

Please do have a look at other recipes too. As I’ve mentioned, chiffon cake takes coffee flavour well. I also make a fatless whisked coffee sponge which is very, very light.
Another flavour I do is coffee and coconut made with coconut cream.

The Mary Berry cake uses the all in one mixing method, so you’ll need to use extra baking powder which needs to be factored in when you’re rescaling the recipe if you decide to use it. I hope you find it useful. 🙂

Hi madeitwithlove

Many thanks for your suggestions. I may go with scaling up the Mary berry victoria sandwich. But I’m not sure if it would bake in a 10inch round deep cake tin, and I don’t have any 10inch round sandwich tins. What’s your opinion? While the Chiffon cake sounds lovely, it may be too soft to cope with sugar paste. The cake I’m making is for an 18th birthday, so I may well want to decorate it with sugar paste. On another note, Alternatively, I could use the initial recipe I mentioned, where I substitute the coffee for the cocoa. But I’m unsure as to the amount of coffee as opposed to cocoa. The recipe calls for 65gr of cocoa so I don’t know if it would be the same weight of coffee, nothing is simple! Any further help would be very much appreciated, thanks.

Hi bellscakes

Mary Berry’s recipe uses 2 tablespoons of coffee. Coco is not a straight substitute for coffee, coco is denser. I’ve baked 10” recipes in one tin so it should be fine. Just keep to the same temperature and increase the baking time. Keep an eye on the baking, it may take 1hr 10 minutes or perhaps less, it depends on your oven. I bake mine on 160 c fan, check what the recipe you will be using says. I’m sorry to have kept you waiting, it’s been a busy day. 🙂. Yes you could use your own recipe and use 2 tbsps of espresso, I infuse the layers lightly with coffee and brandy simple syrup for an extra burst of taste and fill it with coffee buttercream. Leave the brandy out if you don’t want to use it. It’s just extra ways to enhance the flavour.

Ps There is 10” Victoria cake recipe here:

10’’ Round Deep Vanilla Sponge

Thanks very much for your help madeitwithlove, and, no worries for at all I wasn’t expecting an immediate answer. I’m just very glad of your help.

I take it that the 2 tablespoons of coffee in Mary Berry’s victoria sandwich cake is for the 10inch round size of cake. Is that right? I guess it’s dissolved in 2tblsp of water. I now have 2x10inch round sandwich tins so that should make life a bit easier. I found a recipe for a 10inch round coffee and walnut sandwich cake, though I won’t add nuts. However, this recipe calls for 6 tblsp ground coffee dissolved in 350mls boiling water ( to yield 6- 8 tblsp espresso). It seems rather a lot, do you think this can be correct? Or, perhaps the amount of espresso in this recipe is because the recipe calls for 275gr of walnuts. Once again, your help would be very much appreciated. Thanks

The Mary Berry recipe is for an 8” cake which can be scaled up. It has no walnuts, just straightforward coffee cake. The amount of coffee will need to be scaled accordingly. Mix the coffee with some hot water to make a paste and add it to the batter. The omission of walnuts doesn’t make any difference to how much coffee is used. Walnuts add another layer of flavour and texture to the cake. The bigger the cake, the more coffee is required.
Now that you have 2 layer tins, scale the recipe up and divide the batter between the 2 pans.