Coffee & Hazelnut Cake with Caramel Butter-Cream

It’s father’s day today, so as a treat for my dad I asked him what cake he would like me to bake him for the occasion. This was a token question, as each father’s day comes around I know that  only one of two possibilities will ever be requested…lemon or coffee, his favourites. Although these are also two of my absolute favourite cake flavours I’ve made them a million times, so this year I decided to spruce up the traditional coffee cake and give it my own little twist. Inspired by my coffee shop go to’s (caramel & hazelnut lattes), I decided to combine the flavours to make a hazelnut and coffee sponge, accompanied by a sweet caramel buttercream icing. I warn you, unlike my over recipes this cake is in no way a healthy version, it’s as cake should be…delicious and fattening. Enjoy!

Ingredients:

• 50g hazelnuts
• 300g softened butter
• 200g caster sugar
• 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
• 4 eggs
• 200g self raising flour
• 1 large teaspoon of baking powder
• 2 tablespoons of strong black coffee
• 150g icing sugar
• 1 teaspoon of caramel flavouring

Method:

Start by pre-heating the oven to 190 degrees. Take the hazelnuts and whizz them for thirty seconds or so in a small blender until they are roughly chopped, pour these out onto a baking tray and grill for 5-10 minutes until brown.

Whilst the hazelnuts are toasting, mix 200g of the softened butter with all of the caster sugar and the vanilla extract in a large bowl until it forms a creamy paste (this may take several minutes and some elbow grease), then add the eggs in one by one, stirring the mixture well each time another is added. Next add the flour, baking powder and coffee, mixing all the ingredients together. After a couple minutes a smooth cake batter should have formed (make sure there are no floury or buttery lumps - these do not taste good!) Once the hazelnuts are toasted, stir these into the batter too.

Grease two round cake tins with a little butter (I use the butter wrappers as they're great to get into all the edges) and spoon half of the mixture into each tin. Place the tins on the same shelf in the oven and leave to bake for 20-25 minutes. The coffee in the cake will make them look browner quicker, so don't worry if they are looking quite dark whilst they are cooking, check that they are cooked by placing a skewer through the centre, when they're done the skewer should come out clean.

Once the cakes are baked remove them from the oven and leave them to cool on a wire rack. Whilst the cakes are chilling you have plenty of time to make the butter-cream filling. Take the remaining 100g of softened butter and place in a large bowl. Add the caramel flavouring to the butter  and then gradually add the icing sugar, stirring the ingredients together rapidly with a metal spoon, this may take some time but you want the butter-cream to be really smooth. Once the sponge cake is really cool (this will take at least an hour), generously spread the butter-cream between the two cake layers and sandwich together. I dusted my cake with cocoa powder, just so it had that authentic coffee shop taste!