Coffee and almond crunch cake

I promised one of my lovely workmates I would bring a cake into work today as two of my friends there had birthdays during the week (in the two days following my youngest son's birthday :) ). Of course I didn't remember until last night, so I hadn't shopped for ingredients. I thought about making pecan and coffee cake, and had all the ingredients except an orange, but I was slow to get going this morning, and then decided even if I went and purchased the requisite orange, the cake might not cool down sufficiently to ice it before leaving. So I instead settled on another coffee cake which I have made once before - this recipe is from Gordon Ramsay's 'Cooking with Friends'. I first made it when the recipe appeared in Australian Delicious magazine when his book was released, and loved the cake so much I bought the book on the strength of this one recipe. It had two advantages for me today - firstly that I had all the ingredients needed on hand, and secondly, that there was no need to ice it as it has a streusel topping, so it wouldn't matter if it was a little warm still at the time I needed to leave. I could just dust it with icing sugar when I got to work just before serving.

The one thing I hadn't considered was that some people don't like really almondy food, and this cake is quite almondy with both almond meal and almond essence. Luckily everyone at work last night were almond fans, and the cake was well received! I'll have to make this again soon...

Streusel topping

• 60g plain flour
• 40g demerara sugar or brown sugar (I used demerara because I think it gives more of a crunch factor)
• 40g butter

Cake batter

• 170g unsalted butter, softened
• 170g caster sugar
• 3 eggs, lightly beaten
• ½ tsp almond essence
• 100g almond meal
• 60ml espresso or strong coffee, cooled
• 100g self-raising flour
• ½ tsp baking powder
• icing sugar, for serving

Preheat oven to 150C. Line the base and sides of a 20cm springform tin.

Topping: Stir together the flour and sugar. Rub in the butter until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Put aside.

Cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the egg a bit at a time, mixing until well combined. (The mixture will probably look curdled at this point. If you want to, stir in a spoonful of the flour which will amalgamate the mixture evenly again.) Stir though the almond essence. Add half of the cooled espresso and stir. Then sift in the flour and baking powder and fold through. Add the remaining espresso.

Spread the batter evenly into the prepared pan. Sprinkle over the topping mixture. Bake in the oven for 50-60 minutes, or until the top is golden brown, and a skewer inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean.

Cool slightly on a rack before removing from the pan. When completely cool, sift over icing sugar and cut into pieces to serve.

streusel topping

cake batter in pan

streusel topping sprinkled over batter

cooling

Chocolate-pistachio cake

I made this recently for dessert for a dinner with friends of ours, to have as well as the pomegranate ice cream. I actually have not made this cake for 5 years, when I made it for the same friend's 30th birthday. I have not avoided making it since then because I didn't like the recipe, but just because I found shelling the nuts a chore. Shelled pistachios are now more readily available, so I am going to have to make this cake part of my regular repertoire, because it is seriously delicious! The recipe is from How to be a Domestic Goddess by Nigella Lawson.

For the cake:

• 150g dark chocolate
• 150g caster sugar
  
• 150g pistachios
• 150g soft unsalted butter
• 6 large eggs, separated
• 1/2 lemon
• pinch salt

1. Grease and line a 23cm springform tin. Preheat the oven to 190C.
2. Melt the chocolate in the microwave on medium. Leave aside to cool slightly.
   
3. Process 50g of the sugar with the nuts until they are like dust. Add the butter along with another 50g of the sugar; process until smooth. Add the yolks one at a time, pulsing after each addition. Then, with the motor running, slowly pour in the chocolate.
4. Wipe the inside of a bowl with the lemon half (I didn't bother with this step, but the bowl must be scrupulously clean and free of any fat to allow maximum aeration of the egg whites). Whisk the egg whites with the salt until peaks are starting to form. Then slowly add the remaining 50g of sugar while still beating until the egg whites form firm peaks.
5. Add a large dollop of the egg whites to the cake batter and pulse to lighten the mixture. Then add the cake batter to the whites, one third at a time, and fold in gently but firmly.
6. Pour into the prepared tin and bake for 20 minutes. Then turn the oven down to 180C and bake for a further 20-25 minutes, or until cooked. The cake will be starting to come away from the sides of the tin when it is ready.
   
7. Cool in the tin for 15 minutes on a wire rack before removing from the tin. Wait until the cake is completely cooled before icing it.

The icing:

• 150g dark chocolate
• 150ml cream
• drop of orange-flower water (optional)
• 2-4 tbs coarsely chopped or slivered pistachios

Add chocolate, broken into pieces, and cream into a saucepan, along with the orange-flower water. Stir over a low heat until the chocolate is melted. Keep stirring off the heat until the ganache is thick enough to coat, then pour over the cake. Sprinkle over the pistachios.

Serve with either plain creme fraiche, or with a little orange-flower water whisked in. (When I made this for my friend's 30th, I made Turkish Delight Syllabub to serve as alongside the cake - recipe from Nigella Bites - you can view the recipe here).

pistachios and sugar; pistachio meal


adding butter and sugar


adding yolks


adding chocolate; cake batter


left: the cake once cooked - note the cake is pulling away from the sides; right: once cooled, flourless cakes like this tend to sink in the middle and are then deliciously fudgy in the centre

Pecan & coffee cake

I have a weakness for coffee cakes. Also coffee chocolates, anything mocha... and yet I'm not much of a coffee drinker! I made a beautiful coffee cake with a streusel topping last year - recipe from Gordon Ramsay's 'Cooking for Friends'. Must make that one again soon, but this recipe from David Herbert's 'The Really Useful Cookbook' caught my eye - it has coffee fudge icing, ground pecans, and orange zest - what's not to like? Sounds fantastic to me!

Pecans, SR flour and orange zest ready for grinding; Braun Combimax in action (I won this in a magazine comp about 10 years ago); the coarsely ground pecan and orange meal - the zest made it smell amazing!

Beating the butter, eggs and vanilla extract until light and fluffy - at the start of beating at the left (KitchenAid's balloon whisk is a whir here), note how much paler the mixture was by the end of the 5 minutes on the right.

Left - adding the eggs with a spoonful of the pecan / flour mixture between each egg - there was slight curdling after the first egg was added which smoothed out with the addition of the flour. By the time the last egg was added, mixture looked slightly curdled again as you can see on the right.

Strong coffee added; pecan, zest and flour mix added

Ready to bake

I took the cake out of the oven 5 minutes before the minimum time recommended; it wasn't cooked through in the centre, but was looking very brown. I baked it for another 5 minutes and it came out looking perfect. I wondered afterwards why I didn't line the sides of the tin as I normally would. The recipe says to cool the cake in the tin, but I was worried it would be stuck by then, so I carefully ran a spatula around the sides of the cake, unlatched the side of the tin and removed it. It was fine, and not as overly-browned as I had first thought. Now I just have to exercise some patience to allow it to cool before icing it!

Melted butter, water and dissolved coffee added to sifted icing sugar; spreading the frosting on the cake with a straight spatula.

The texture of this cake from the coarsely ground pecans is just amazing! It is beautifully moist, and the hint of orange flavour from the zest works really well with the coffee and pecan flavours. The icing was nicely flavoured and went well with the cake, but it is very sweet. I think I would have preferred something lighter - like a coffee-flavoured buttercream or a coffee-flavoured cream cheese frosting perhaps. David also suggests you could just dust the cake with icing sugar instead of frosting it, which I think would be quite nice. He also suggests making extra icing, splitting the cake in half horizontally, and sandwiching the halves together with some frosting and spreading more frosting over the top. That would be too sweet for my taste, but no doubt very presentable.

The recipe

Cake

• 200g pecans
• 60g self-raising flour
• finely grated zest of one orange
• 175g butter, at room temperature
• 175g caster sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 3 eggs
• 2½ tbs strong coffee
  

1. Preheat oven to 180ºC. Lightly grease and line the base of a 20cm springform tin.
   
2. In a food processor or blender, coarsely grind together the pecans, flour and zest.
3. Beat the butter, sugar and vanilla extract together for 5 minutes or until pale.
4. Lightly beat the eggs and slowly add to the butter mixture one at a time while still beating the mixture, with a spoonful of the flour mixture between each egg.
5. Stir through the coffee.
6. Fold through the remaining flour mixture with a metal spoon (I used a balloon whisk).
7. Bake for 45-50 minutes.
8. Cool in tin.
9. Serve either dusted with icing sugar or iced with coffee fudge frosting.
   

Coffee fudge frosting

• 40g butter
• 30ml water
• 1 tsp coffee granules
  
• 200g icing sugar

1. Sift icing sugar.
2. Combine butter, water and coffee in a small saucepan and stir over low heat until butter is melted and coffee granules are dissolved.
3. Add the butter mixture to the icing sugar and stir to combine. Continue stirring until cool and thick enough to ice the cake, and then ice immediately. Decorate with pecans if desired.