Coffee-Walnut Cake

Remember all that coffee frosting leftover from the coffee cake pops I made?  Well, this is what I did with it:

BUT FIRST...

A quick description of what exactly happened with that crazy frosting.

The frosting that went into the cake pops had cream cheese added to it, along with the powdered sugar and coffee and butter.  It was thick and frosting-like.

The leftovers... not so much.

Without cream cheese and with wayyy too much coffee (because I was trying to get a more coffee-like taste) wayyy too little powdered sugar (because I used it all XP), it was... almost soupy.

SOUP IS NOT FROSTING.

But.

It can be called a glaze.

Sophistication for the win.

But a glaze without anything for it to go on is useless, worthless, pointless.  And the bowl it was in was taking up valuable space in the fridge.

It had to go.

...on a walnut cake.

Cake and walnuts and an adapted Martha Stewart cupcake recipe and leftover coffee glaze = mishmash original recipe.

Walnut Cake with Coffee Glaze
REQUIRES SOFTENED BUTTER

Cake:
2 3/4 cups flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
2 sticks unsalted butter, softened
1 1/2 cups sugar
3 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup milk
1 1/2 cups chopped walnuts

Glaze:
1 stick unsalted butter, softened
4 cups powdered sugar
1 tablespoon milk
a mug/cup/glass/thing of strong coffee
extra powdered sugar

Optional:
chopped walnuts
semisweet chocolate chips, melted

For the cake:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Grease/Pam 9x13 inch pan.
2. In large bowl, stir flour, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon with a fork.  Set aside.
3. In another large bowl, beat butter and sugar until creamy.  Add eggs and vanilla; beat until combined.
4. Add 1/2 flour mixture, 1 cup of milk, then rest of flour mixture to butter mixture in that order.
5. Stir in walnuts.
6. Spread batter in prepared pan and bake 30-40 minutes or until a toothpick inserted near center comes out clean.
7. Let cool in pan slightly before topping with glaze.

For the glaze:

1. Beat butter in large bowl.  Add powdered sugar a cup at a time, beating well after each addition.
2. Add milk and mix well.
3. Add in enough coffee for a strong taste.  Add it powdered sugar until it's slightly less soupy.  Do this by taste and eyeball the consistency.

Assembly:

1. Spread glaze on cake.
2. If desired, sprinkle with extra chopped walnuts.
3. If desired, melt semisweet chocolate chips and allow to cool 5 minutes.  Place in plastic bag and snip off the very tip of the corner of the bag - or use a pastry bag.  Drizzle melted chocolate in a criss-cross pattern.

Breaking it down:

Combine flour, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon...

Beat butter and sugar...

Add eggs...

Add vanilla and mix well.  Add in half of the flour, all the milk, and the rest of the flour...

Combine well.  Stir in the walnuts...

...and spread in your greased pan.

Bake at 350 degrees for 30-40 minutes, and then allow to cool slightly.  Whip up that glaze and spread it on the cake.  I used melted semisweet chips for this decorative pattern and I sprinkled the cake with walnuts, too.  PUT INTO REFRIGERATOR - trust me on this, otherwise the glaze will always be soup - and then cut into pieces.  Yum!

I thought this was a really great cake.  I got the glaze a little too sweet, so that wasn't awesomesauce, but otherwise it tasted very good! :D

Go out there and be delicious!
-JJ

Coffee Cake Pops

Sorry for the long break!  Finals week=no blogging time.

But now that that's all over, it's back to... cake pops!

I made these for my grandma's birthday, because she's addicted to coffee.  I guess I'm not really helping that, am I? :3

So.  I made basic yellow cake in a 9x13 pan, crumbled it, and combined it with some homemade coffee frosting.

About that frosting...

I based my frosting off of this recipe, but I found that it wasn't coffee enough.  Especially when combined with yellow cake.  (Note to self: Next time, bake a coffee-flavored cake and make coffee frosting!)

So I decided to improvise.

(Play ominous music here.)

And, it kind of worked!  Except that I ended up using pretty much all of the powdered sugar and instant coffee.  Oops.

Eventually I got it to a nice, not-too-sweet, very-coffee-flavored frosting.  (Cream cheese, baby.  It really works.)

But when I combined it with the cake, the coffee flavor kind of got lost.  And ran away.  :(

However...


I ground up some instant coffee flakes/things/whateverIdon'tdrinkcoffeesoIwouldn'tknow (Yes, it's true, I don't drink coffee.  I like it, I just don't drink it, that's all don't hate meeee! DX) with a mortar and pestle and stirred it into the cake-and-frosting mixture.  That really got the coffee flavor going strong.

Then I formed it into balls...

And refrigerated them for a day.  For the first time, I didn't coat my cake pops in white chocolate! :O I melted semisweet chocolate chips instead, glopped it on there (which makes for a very thick coating that is prone to melting if you leave it out too long), and stuck a chocolate-covered espresso bean on the top of each one.

Insta-adorable! :)

My advice to you: Let these pops cool for about a half-hour, then stick them in the fridge.  Since it was like 90 degrees when I made these, no wonder they never fully dried/cooled - but real chocolate works differently than white chocolate, so put them in the fridge just in case.

These freeze just as well as any other pops - this I know because I froze them until the day of my grandma's birthday.

My notes:
These were pretty good, except the coating's too thick.  And I don't like coffee-flavored cake.  But that's just me.

If you're trying to make these, the best of luck to ya!
-JJ

P.S. Sorry for the lack of pictures... I was kind of freaking out about the frosting dilemma...

P.P.S. So you know how I had to experiment with the frosting?  I had lots leftover.  TONS.  And it's all featured in my next post!