Coffee Cakes

This is a quick and easy recipe, perfect if you're in a rush, and it uses simple ingredients too. The cakes taste really lovely and moist so long as you use enough water. Too much means the mix is so runny you can just pour it into the cases without using a spoon, but the chances are if that's the case, you've gone a bit over board. The moistness of the cakes means they'll keep for a little longer than normal, so they're good to make as gifts if you fancy spending a bit longer decorating them.


Cake ingredients
2 large eggs
roughly 100g:
self raising flour
butter (unsalted is best)
sugar ( I used soft brown but caster is more conventional if you haven't got that. Brown sugar just gives the cakes a slightly richer taste which compliments the bitter coffee.)
1 tsp baking powder
4 tsps instant coffee (this can be altered according to taste. 3 tsps is more like a hint of coffee, any more gives you a definite coffee flavour)
2 tbps boiling water (roughly)

Cake:

• Crack two eggs into a bowl where they can be weighed. This will determine how much of the other ingredients you need as they should be the same weight as the eggs. It will usually come to just over 100g but it will vary depending on the eggs. It's worth knowing that two eggs will make about a dozen cakes.
• Mix together all the ingredients except the hot water and coffee with an electric whisk (or by hand if you have strong arms and no electric) until combined.
• Dissolve the coffee in the hot water (I usually do this in a mug because that's how I'm used to making coffee but I expect you could use a bowl, so long as it's still separate from the other ingredients.)
• Mix the dissolved coffee with the combined ingredients until the batter is light and fluffy. The more you mix, the lighter the cakes will be, and the more it will make. (I found this out by accident when I over whisked a mixture and made double the amount I was supposed to. A good tip if you're making layer cake and it looks like it might be a bit small.)
• Split between a dozen cases and bake at 180oc for about 17 mins or until springy and an inserted skewer comes out clean.

Icing:

Icing Ingredients

70g dark chocolate (you can use milk, but dark has more flavour and goes well with coffee. Perhaps if you used caster sugar in the cakes milk chocolate would work better as it adds more sweetness. Dark can also be quite strong so it's good if you don't want the cake to only taste of coffee.)

a knob of butter

• Melt the chocolate following the packet instructions, being careful not to burn it.
• Once the chocolate is melted and hot (and yummy) cut the butter into chunks and mix it in until it melts. It's best to use warm or room temperature butter for this as it'll melt faster. If it takes a while, continue to heat the chocolate in the way you were doing previously and stir.
• Spread over the cakes. I also added a walnut half to each one, it's nice to have a bit of decor. 
• Then leave to set if you want a firmer icing, or if you prefer eat them straight away.

Finally, I'd like to dedicate this to my dad as coffee cake is his favourite.

Yours truly
The Cupcake Fairy