Caaaaaake!

Today's is Paul's birthday, so I baked a cake. This is the first cake I've made in months, and the first two-pan cake I've cooked in years - in fact, I can't remember the last time I did. It was our ninth wedding anniversary on Thursday, and I might have made a Victoria sponge at some point in the last nine years, but I don't remember.

Three years ago, for his 40th, I made a large carrot cake for the party. This year, I did coffee and walnut, just to ring the changes. It didn't turn out too badly...



...so I thought I'd put the recipe down so I can remember how I did it.

The main recipe came from the BBC, but I mock its paucity of walnuts and the buttercream looked pants, so I changed it back to the classic proportions.

Cake
8oz butter, "melted but not oiled," as Mrs Beaton would say
8oz sugar (see note 1)
4 eggs, beaten
8oz self-raising flour
4oz chopped walnuts (see note 2)
2 fluid oz of strong espresso (see note 3)
12 walnut halves for decoration

Buttercream
4oz butter
8oz icing sugar
1.5 tbsp strong cold espresso

Note 1: light brown soft would work well in this recipe (better than plain caster) but I didn't have any. I substituted 2oz dark brown soft and 6oz vanilla caster, and that worked well.

Note 2: This is a big cake - 8" across - and the original amount of walnuts seemed stingy. I could only find walnut pieces, which were a bit large, so I roughly chopped about 3/4 and finely chopped the rest (to a bit bigger size than standard ground almonds. No, I didn't do this by hand!) It wasn't overly walnutty, and there wasn't too much texture.

Note 3: Paul reckons the coffee taste isn't strong enough (he's a big coffee fan). It's plenty strong enough for me, but it's still stronger in the icing than the cake. You could get round that by using fine espresso powder in the cake itself, or by using a coffee essence. The real espresso gives a more complex flavour, though.

Cake: Grease two 8" cake tins (and line, if they're not loose-bottomed ones). Pre-heat oven to gas mark 4, 180C, 350F. Beat the sugar and butter until pale and fluffy, then gradually beat in the eggs in stages. For what it's worth, I find the egg number is the number of stages - the first egg can go straight in, the second in two parts, the third in three. Then I add about an ounce of the flour and beat it in before adding the final egg, to stop the mixture curdling. (You know it's starting to curdle if it starts to look grainy. If it does start to go, you can always add a bit of flour sooner. Even if it does go, it won't affect the taste of the finished cake.)

Sprinkle over the flour and cut it in with a metal spoon. Then add the walnuts, then the coffee. I changed the order a bit because I didn't know how much leeway I had with the liquid, so I added about half before the flour. If you do this, bear in mind it will tend to cause curdling, so add it a bit at a time. Mixture will be too stiff to pour, so divide it between the two tins and gently level. Bake for around 25 minutes. If you have to put one above the other in the oven, swap their positions halfway through the cooking.

Buttercream: I used a standard 1 part butter to 2 parts sifted icing sugar. The trick with buttercream is to cream it before adding any liquid, just like the cake. Beat the butter on its own with a wooden spoon first until it's very soft. Then add the sifted icing sugar and mix the two. This takes a while, and I've found it's easiest using a smaller metal spoon. When this is done, the mixture will be very solid and yellow. Go back to the wooden spoon and beat vigorously until the mixture is much softer and paler. At that point, you can add the liquid and beat again.

Make sure the cake is cold before icing. After icing and decorating, the buttercream is still likely to be very soft, so chill for a while until it firms up - it shouldn't take long.

Optionally, if you're a knife collector, you can use an 11" bowie knife to cut it. Swords into ploughshares, and all that. Probably best not to post pics of that, though!