Cape Cod, English Coffee Cake & a Cuppa

I'm soooo excited. We're going on a family vacation to Cape Cod. Our first vacation since the hubby and I left Australia (aside from our visits back to the mother land, but they don't count). We picked out the most perfect cottage... Well, it looked OK on the website... Eek, I hope it wasn't photo-shopped within an inch of it's life.
Anyways,  I can't wait to take heaps of pictures (albeit not very well), discover the Cape, not do any house work and eat fantastic food... Unfortunately not shellfish, as I developed a rather nasty allergy to this after the birth of my daughter...
Anyhoo, I obviously have images of sitting out on the deck, taking in the sea air, with a lovely cuppa. With this in mind, I decided to bake a coffee cake to take with me and enjoy with said cuppa. Not the coffee crumb cake that appears in the States, but an English Coffee Cake , topped with lashings of coffee frosting and walnuts... My mouth waters just thinking about it!

I'm not an accomplished cook by any stretch of the imagination, but this always turns out tasty. If you want to give it a whizz then I've popped the recipe on the bottom of this blog.

I substituted the strawberry jam with cherry jam, pecans instead of walnuts and topped with a few coffee beans too!

Wish my handwriting was neater...

I just love these measuring spoons...

This is one cake I won't be sharing with the kiddies, as it has quite a lot of coffee in it and my kids DO NOT need anymore energy... I, on the other hand, will take caffeine in any form and at any given opportunity.

Speaking of which, I had to slice the cake for transportation (need to buy a cake tin), so I figured I may as well have a slice with my evening cuppa...ahhhhhh...

English Coffee Cake

Ingredients

150g sugar (2/3 cup)

150g butter or marg (1.3 stick)

3 eggs

150g self raising flour (2/3 cup)

1 ½ tsp baking powder

1 tbsp hot water

1 tbsp instant coffee

For the icing sugar

225g icing sugar (2 cups)

100g butter / marg (1 stick)

1 tbsp hot water

1 ½ tbsp instant coffee

Filling / Decoration

Strawberry jam

Walnut pieces

Dark  chocolate


(I tried to convert to American Measures. It should work out OK... I'll try it this way next time)

Method

1.  Preheat the oven at 160C, 325 F, gas 3.Baseline and grease two equally sized sandwich tins (I usually sprinkle with a little flour too)!

2.  Add the sugar and the butter to a bowl and whisk until very fluffy and a pale cream.

3.  Whisk the eggs in a mug with a fork and then add them gradually to the mixture with 1 tbsp of flour each time. Make sure you don't use all the flour.

4.  Add the rest of the flour and the baking powder to the mixture and fold it in gently with a large metal spoon.

5.  Dissolve the coffee in the boiling water and add to the mixture still folding. Once mixed, divide into the sandwich tins and cook for 30 minutes or until a fork comes out clean.

6.  Meanwhile Cream the butter and the icing sugar until light and fluffy. Dissolve the coffee in boiling water, making sure you don't add too much water or the icing will be runny and add it to the butter and icing sugar. Whisk and leave in the fridge until the cake is done.

7.  Once the cakes are done and have been put onto plates spread the icing on the bottom of one of the cakes (leaving around half of the icing for the top) and spread the strawberry jam onto the bottom of the other. Spread the remaining icing on top of the cake and decorate with grated dark chocolate and walnuts (I find pecans work just as well too).