Coffee Cake

I was always taught not to eat anything bigger than my face. But when it's a friends birthday, and they love coffee cake, then I'm not sure what alternative there is beyond showing up with the most enormous coffee cake you've ever seen. (Admittedly, if you're sensible, the individual slices of cake are a great deal smaller than my face - So maybe the rule doesn't apply as strictly...)

Adapted from The Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook

Serves 16-20 (or even 32 if you're very modest with servings!)

For the cake

• 2 tbsp instant coffee granules 
• 170ml boiling water 
• 420g unsalted butter (at room temperature) 
• 30g margarine 
• 450g caster sugar 
• 8 medium eggs 
• 450g plain flour 
• 2 tbsp baking powder 
• 2 tsp cocoa powder 

For the icing

• 250g icing sugar 
• 80g unsalted butter (at room temperature) 
• 25ml milk (we use semi-skimmed) 
• 4 drops of vanilla extract 
• 40g dark chocolate

First, make the coffee essence - Put the coffee granules into a saucepan, and pour over the boiling water. Simmer until reduced by half - this should take 10-15minutes. Remove from the heat and cool completely. Set aside a tablespoon for the icing.

Preheat the oven to 160°C.

Beat together the butter, margarine (the original recipe suggested 450g unsalted butter, but we modified the recipe so that 2x250g packs of butter do nicely), caster sugar and coffee essence in a large (at least 3L) bowl. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well. Then beat in the flour, baking powder and cocoa powder until everything is combined and the mixture is light and fluffy.

Pour the mixture into a 25cm cake ring. Be careful not to overfill the cake ring - Don't fill it more than 2/3 full. We have a pretty deep cake ring and it very nearly overflowed! Using a spoon, smooth over the top of the cake mixture. Put it in the oven and leave the oven closed until the cake is done. After 40 minutes, turn up the temperature to 170°C and cook for a further 10 minutes, or until the cake feels firm to tough.

Take the cake out of the oven and leave to cool a little in the tin. Then turn it onto a drying rack.

Once cooled, make the icing: Carefully beat together the icing sugar and butter. Still beating, slowly add the milk, a little bit at a time. Finally, beat in the vanilla extract, and the tablespoon of coffee essence left over from before.

Spoon the icing on the cake. Use a peeler or grater to make chocolate flakes to decorate. You might even want to decorate with a few coffee beans if you've got some - We didn't.