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Any regular reader will know that I love to bake simple, homamde cakes that the whole family will love. My favourites are loaf cakes as they are easy to bake and super easy to slice and store. Our latest bake is this coffee walnut loaf, inspired by Dave’s love of coffee and my willingness to try pretty much anything in cake form!

How do you make a coffee walnut cake?

This easy coffee and walnut cake recipe is made using typical cake ingredients – eggs, butter, flour and sugar. We use unsalted butter but margarine also works well and although we use self raising flour you can also use plain flour and a little baking powder / baking soda if you prefer.

We also use light brown sugar for this bake but you can also use golden caster sugar, white caster sugar or even standard granulated sugar if you want to. It’s a really easy recipe to adapt to use whatever you have to hand.

For the coffee and walnut flavours we use instant coffee dissolved with just a little boiling water. You can use whatever coffee you like – as well as standard coffee or decaf. We use instant coffee granules for ease but you can use real coffee if you want to as well or even a premade coffee flavouring or coffee essence.

To give the walnut and coffee loaf cake a nice, even finish, make sure the walnuts you use in the cake batter are crushed as small as possible. We use a food processor for this but have also been known to put them in a bag and hit them with a rolling pin! Whatever works.

The coffee buttercream frosting on this coffee loaf cake is delicious, super easy to make and will have you licking the bowl with glee! If short of time you can simply ice the top of the cake and not the middle but the cake really does taste so good with the layer of frosting in the centre.

This coffee and walnut cake loaf is a fantastic bake to enjoy as a family, to have when friends come over, enjoyed alongside a cup of tea or coffee, and could be a lovely edition to a bake sale – just watch out for allergies!

If you’re looking for other recipes to try, here’s our Chocolate Biscoff Loaf Cake Recipe, Apple Loaf Cake Recipe, Banana and Rhubarb Loaf Cake Recipe and our Cherry Bakewell Loaf Cake Recipe. You can see all our recipes to date here.

What equipment do you need for this coffee walnut cake recipe?

You can make this recipe simply with things you already have in your kitchen but here are the things we use in case there’s something you don’t already have:

As you can see, it’s all things you probably have already. We use loaf tin liners to guarantee that bakes come out of the tin easily and they’re great when baking as gifts too but parchment paper works well too

So here’s our recipe for Coffee and Walnut Loaf Cake:

Ingredients

2 tablespoons instant coffee
1 tbsp boiling water
60g shelled walnuts
225g Unsalted butter at room temperature
225g light brown sugar
225g self raising flour
4 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract

Coffee icing and topping

1 tablespoon Instant coffee powder
1 tablespoon Boiling water
150g unsalted butter at room temperature
300g icing sugar
25g walnuts, crushed

Recipe

Preheat oven at 180C/350F/Gas 4
Line or grease a loaf tin.
Crush the walnuts using a food processor. They should be as fine as possible.
Mix the instant coffee with the boiling water to make a paste.
Put the rest of the ingredients in a large mixing bowl and mix well.
Fold the coffee paste and the walnuts into the mixture.
Pour the cake batter mixture into the prepared loaf tin and bake in the middle of the oven for 50-60 minutes until brown on the top and a skewer comes out clean. Leave to cool completely on a wire rack.
To make the coffee icing, mix the instant coffee with the boiling water.
Add the icing sugar and butter to a large mixing bowl along with the coffee and mix well until you have created a light, rich, coffee icing.
Prepare the cake by levelling the top if needed and cutting in half lengthways.
Pipe half the icing on top of the cake base before putting the top half back in place. Ice the top of the cake with the rest of the coffee icing.
Sprinkle with crushed walnuts and serve.

If you’d like to print or pin the Coffee and Walnut Loaf Cake Recipe recipe for later you can do so below. Enjoy!

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