When I was a kid, the smalI corner shop at the end of my road, used to sell a walnut cake that was not only cheap enough for my pocket money to stretch to, but also tasted good enough to warrant going back almost weekly to buy another, and keep it all to myself.

Now this cake wasn’t made in a high end bakers kitchen, it was mass produced in a factory, where I don’t know, but there was something about the make up of this cheap cake that made me keep going back..

Now I haven’t found that cake again, and even if I did, I’m not sure it would still taste the same, in retrospect, childhood memory always makes things shiny. And I’m not sure that this recipe goes any way to keeping those childhood memory alive, but it’s a good one never the less.

The addition of coffee and the orange juice and zest, brings this cake up to something far more than was sold in the corner shop. The orange isn’t something that is the primary flavour, and only comes into it’s own to stop the coffee flavour from having that bitter aftertaste, i at least, alway associate with coffee. I’m not the biggest fan of coffee, to drink or to eat.

Something i often do and for some reason i didn’t for the photos, but did to serve, is to grate the rind of an orange over the top when decorating.

This cake is stacked, which in my eyes, already makes it something special, and the orange brings a spring freshness to a cake which could easily be weighed down with the coffee.

Of course, walnuts are bountiful in the cake and with even more decorating the top, it’s worth putting the oven on for.

As always, read the Tip Box at the end of the recipe.

Go on, give it a go and enjoy your sweet life!

What You Need

Cake

225g Baking Margarine – Extra for tin preparation – See Tip Box
225g Light Brown Sugar
225g Self Raising Flour – Extra for tin preparation
125g Walnuts Chopped – Plus Extra for decoration
4 Large Eggs
3 Large Orange – Juice of 1 and Zest of all of the oranges.
2 tsp Instant Coffee
1 tsp Baking Powder
1 tsp Vanilla Extract

Buttercream

600g Icing Sugar
300g Butter – Softened – See Tip Box
2 tsp Instant Coffee
2-4 tsp Orange Juice
1 tsp Vanilla Extract – See Tip Box
Zest from 1 large Orange

Decoration

Walnuts - Optional
Zest from 1 Large Orange - Optional

How It’s Done

Cake

Heat the oven to 180c
4 x 8” Shallow Tins
Use some margarine and coat the inside of each tin, making sure to get into the corner.
Put some flour into the tins and cover the entire tin with flour.
Tap out any excess flour.
Cut out circles of non-stick baking parchment to fit the bottom of each tin, and place one circle in each tin.
Set the tins aside until needed.
Put the instant coffee into a small cup and add 2 tsp of boiling water.
Mix to dissolve the coffee and set it aside to cool and until needed.
Zest and juice the oranges into a bowl and set it aside until needed.
Roughly chop the walnuts and set them aside until needed.
Place the softened butter and the sugar into the bowl of an electric mixer and let it beat for 5 minutes, scraping down the sides, until the mixture is paler and fluffier.
Add the eggs and vanilla extract to the butter mixture and beat for around 5 minutes, scraping down the side of the bowl a few times during the process.
Add the cold coffee, the orange juice and the zest and beat for another 2 minutes.
While the butter and egg mixture is beating, in another bowl, add the flour and baking powder, and use a whisk to mix them together.
Add the flour mixture and the chopped walnuts to the batter mixture and using a large metal spoon or a silicone spatula, fold the flour mixture in to the batter.
Don’t over mix, so once the flour mixture is just folded in, stop mixing – See Tip Box
Once everything is mixed, divide the mixture into the prepared tins and gently level the tops.
Put the tins into the pre-heated oven, and bake for around 20 - 25 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean or when the centre is very gently pushed, it immediately bounces back – See Tip Box
Once baked, remove the tins from the oven and let them cool completely while still in the tin.
While the cakes are cooling, make the buttercream.

Buttercream

Put the instant coffee into a small cup and add 2 tsp of orange juice.
Mix until the instant coffee breaks down.
Give it a mix so the coffee dissolves into the orange juice into the orange juice
Put the orange and coffee mixture aside until needed.
Put the softened butter into a clean mixing bowl of an electric mixer.
Beat the butter, scraping down the bowl several times, until it becomes very light in colour and fluffy in texture.

Be patient, beat for around 5 minutes.

Add the icing sugar, the coffee orange mixture and the vanilla extract.
Scraping down the sides several times, beat the butter cream mixture from 5-7 minutes so the buttercream increases in volume and is very light in texture.
Once ready, let the buttercream sit while getting the cakes ready.

Make a swirl on the top of the cake is you like.

Assembly

Find a serving plate that is at least 2 inches larger than the cake.
Use a very sharp knife, or a small off set spatula, and run it around the inside of each of the cake tins, loosening them from the sides of the tins.
Put a small dollop of buttercream in the centre of the serving plate, and put one layer of cake in the centre of the plate, on top of the buttercream dollop. This will stop the cake from moving around.
Run a sharp knife around the inside of the cake tin, remove one of the layers and remember to peel away the parchment.
Lay the cake layer in the centre of the plate on top ofd the blob of buttercream.
Cut some thick strips of baking parchment and very gently push them around the bottom layer of the cake. This helps keep the edges neat.
Divide the remaining buttercream into two bowls. 2/3 into one bowl, the rest into a smaller bowl.

Grate some orange zest on the top if you want to.

Put some of the buttercream, from the smaller bowl, onto the cake layer, and using an offset spatula, move it around the cake making sure the buttercream is level.

Remove another cake layer from it’s tin, and peel off the non-stick baking parchment.
Place it gently on top of the first layer.
Repeat the process of the buttercream.
Do the same for the remaining two cake layers.
For the top of the cake and outside of the cake, put the buttercream from the large bowl on top of the cake and use an offset spatula to move the buttercream around until it covers the entire top of the cake.
Use the spatular to work the buttercream down the sides of the cake, and taking time, use the spatular to move it around the entire outer edge of the cake, scraping it off and putting it back on when needed.
Once the entire buttercream has been used up and the entire cake is covered, use the spatular to make a swirl pattern on the top of the cake - or leave the top as it is. - See Tip Box
Gently remove the strips of parchment paper from the bottom of the cake.
Use some walnuts pieces to decorate the top of the cake and grate the zest of one orange over the top.
Serve the cake at room temperature and use a sharp knife to cut the slices.

Tip Box

Margarine for the cake – I like to use cooking margarine in all of my cakes. My rule is cooking margarine in cakes and butter in biscuits.

In my opinion, using butter to make a cake makes the end result dense and a little heavy.

When I use cooking margarine, the end cake has a better texture, with a crumb that is, ore open and

Over mixing – 1) Over mixing the batter can result in a heavy and tough cake. It’s important to stop folding (mixing) the mixture when the flour mixture has just disappeared and not keep mixing it.
2) The addition of the orange juice (Citrus) can make the batter split (the solid fats separate from the liquids) before the addition of the flour. If this happens, once the flour is added, and folded in, the batter should come together again.
Butter for the buttercream – 1) Never use margarine to make buttercream, the clue is in the name. Margarine is too soft to hold up and quite frankly, the end result taste yuk if margarine is used.
2) Making good buttercream takes time and patience, so it’s important not to rush.
Vanilla – It may seem a little strange to add vanilla to a cake thats main flavours are coffee and orange, but vanilla is a strange little thing. Not only is it a flavour in it’s own right, when added to bakes with other flavours it works with them to bring out those flavours too. Magic=!

Baking – All ovens are different so adjust the baking time accordingly. Don’t over bake the cake.
Decorating - 1) Decorate the top[ pf the cake as you wish, and also dont if thats what you’d like to do too.
2) Making a swirl pattern on the top pf the cake os really effective and really easy. The tip is to keep the flat of the spatular as still as possible and rotate the plate - if you have a lazy Susan turntable use that.

Hi.

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Hi.

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