Coffee & Walnut Cake

Okay, so it doesn't look like the most appetising of cakes, but it tastes like a rather large slice of heaven.

So of course today, considering yesterday was a right-off, I should have been sorting through the boxes piled up in the living room, doing some paperwork, filing my tax returns or at least making things i can actually make some money out of. But, I've quite clearly got the back to school nerves and was having a little wobble, when I realised that a little baking would probably calm those pesky nerves and feed naughty the sweet tooth.

I've never made this before, and as you will realise I'm not very good at keeping measurements (both time and scale always seem to baffle me) but i always stick to the same quantities of fat, sugar, egg and flour (one large egg to approx. 60g of each).
One day, as my confidence grows i will change this, but as this always gives me a lovely sponge i'll stick with it for now. Thankyouverymuch!

Ingredients:
Sponge -
120g Fat (i used soy spread, strangely it always gives a lovely light texture)
120g Sugar - Beautiful golden caster sugar
2 large free range eggs (whisk them together in a bowl ready to add)
120g Self raising flour
1x tsp of baking powder
35g approx. of walnuts, most roughly broken + some for decoration
a strong shot of coffee (half now, half for the buttercream)
Buttercream-
100g Butter
100g (approx to taste) natural golden icing sugar
half your coffee shot


Method:
1. Pop the oven on to heat up at 200c/ gas mark 4 and prepare a tin with butter and or baking paper (today i used a loaf tin for mine)
2. Cream the fat and sugar together until you have a lovely fluffy buttery mix.
3. Add half the shot of coffee -  i made this by putting what i would normally put in the caffettiera to make 1 rather large cup of strong coffee for myself, but only putting in a quarter of the amount of boiling water.

This gives a nice subtle coffee taste, but of course you can change this according to your own taste.

4. Mix this in well, it may take a while and may curdle. Don't worry if it does, add a spoon full of flour to help bring the consistency back.

5. Add the eggs, bit by bit, adding a little flour as you go.

6. Sift and fold in the rest of the flour and baking powder and then add the broken walnuts and pour into the baking tin, this should be a fairly wet consistency.

7. Pop the tin in the pre-heated oven for about 30 minutes or so. It should be done when you press the sponge and it springs back or your put a skewer in and it come out clean. 

8. Leave to cool and prepare the buttercream icing! (yummy - my best bit)

9. In a bowl add the other half a shot of coffee to around 100g of icing sugar to make a paste.

10. In another bowl, cream the butter until creamy and soft and then slowly add the coffee sugar paste.

11. Once the sponge has cooled, butter the top of the cake and arrange the rest of the walnuts you've saves for decoration.

12. eat eat share eat.

NB: Now i have to be honest with you, i've been distracted all day which is probably why mine looks like this, but if i payed attention, i probably could have made it well buff.