Brendan's coffee and walnut cake

I'm going to start this post with a warning.

This cake is delicious and addictive!

The first attempt to make a coffee cake was a total disaster. So I turned to the master...the lovely Brendan from The Great British Bakeoff.

I followed the recipe with no ad libbing and it turned out brilliantly. The only changes I made were to use a different tin size and a simple coffee buttercream.  Visit Brendan's website.

Cream together 175g butter with 175g sugar. Beat in three eggs. Add 175g self raising flour plus 1tsp baking powder.

Dissolve 3tsps coffee granules in 1. tbsp boiling water and add. Finally, add 65g chopped walnuts.

Bake until done at 180c. It took about 35 minutes using my tin.

To make the buttercream, use a ratio of half butter to icing sugar. Eg for 100g butter use 200g icing sugar. Add 3tsps coffee granules dissolved in 1tbsp boiling water to the buttercream.

Cover the cake with buttercream and decorate with walnuts.

Apparently the cake will keep for several days in a tin. Mine didn't last that long!

Chocolate cake for Arlene

This is a first go to perfect a chocolate cake. My friend Arlene is hunting for a recipe so thought I would give it a go. Of course if I was any sort of decent friend I would have taken her some to try.... But it didn't last long enough!

I will just have to make another one.

This recipe is from Cake Icing and Decorating, another from the St Michael cookery library circa 1978.

Cream 100g of butter with 100g sugar until pale and fluffy (as always I did a bit extra due to my addiction to the mixture).

Beat in 2 eggs, a little at a time. Then, sift in 100g self raising flour and 4tsps cocoa powder.

Fold on the flour then place mixture in cake tin, which is lined and/or greased appropriately.

Bake at 160c for about 20 minutes or until cooked. Turn out into a cooling rack.

The cake didn't rise as much as I thought it might but my cake tin might have been a bit big.

To decorate I used buttercream icing.

Cream 100g butter then add 200g sifted icing sugar. Beat together but if not coming together add 1tsp milk. If you need to add more milk then do it 1tsp at a time.

Spread over the cake. Lick the bowl so as not to waste any!

Enjoy.