Another vegan success: coffee and walnut cake

No fundraiser cake stall would be complete without a Coffee and Walnut cake. I’m not referring to the American idea of a ‘coffee cake’ as being simply a cake that you eat with coffee, though, of course, you can eat it with coffee or tea, or just on its own for a real sugary sweet hit. The traditional coffee and walnut cake is a quintessentially English phenomenon. Think village fetes, the Women’s Institute and the Archers. Coffee and walnut cake is always top of my list when I’m baking for Twilight.

I haven’t been able to track down the origin of this English classic. The practice of eating sweet cakes with a drink of coffee is said to have developed in northern Europe in the seventeenth century. Certainly we’ve had some great cakes with coffee in Germany, many with the classic streusel topping and a great variety of flavours including coffee. But the combination of coffee and walnut in a two-storey sponge cake sandwiched together with rich coffee-flavoured buttercream is uniquely English.

There’s no shortage of recipes for the traditional version of this cake, from Delia Smith to Good Housekeeping, and the subject even warranted an article in the Guardian. However, I didn’t find much inspiration on the vegan front. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m pretty keen on American recipes as a rule but a quick search on some of my favourite websites and blogs threw up plenty of ‘coffee cake’ recipes but not what I was seeking. I did have my Mum’s ever reliable method I’d previously followed for years, so perhaps it would be possible to veganise this or adapt the Victoria Sponge recipe I made a couple of weeks ago.

A classic Coffee and Walnut Cake is based on a sponge cake recipe with the addition of chopped walnuts, both in the mix and on the top, plus coffee flavouring. The first question to answer was how to introduce the coffee flavour? My Mum always had a bottle of Camp coffee in the store-cupboard. I don’t think she ever actually made a drink from it, but it was always brought out whenever the word coffee appeared in a recipe. Camp coffee is still around, and there are plenty of baking recipes on its website, but nothing vegan unfortunately. I haven’t actually seen Camp Coffee in the ‘English aisle’ here. In the past I’ve used instant coffee powder or granules, but as we only drink ‘real’ coffee this was off the menu. Brewing up some really strong espresso was also off the cards following the demise of our barista machine. Time to see what was available in the supermarket and here I struck gold in the form of a little bottle of Vahiné Extrait de Café Liquide.

Last autumn I gathered lots of walnuts from the tree out in the lane and still had plenty in the freezer. I decided not to put any walnuts in the sponge mix, as I was concerned it might affect its ability to rise. So, I chopped them finely and mixed into the vegan buttercream to give a crunchy sandwich layer. Then, it was simply a matter of substituting a teaspoon of the (very strong) coffee extract in place of a Victoria sponge’s vanilla essence and mixing this into the soya ‘buttermilk’ before adding to the dry ingredients. A little vegan buttercream was reserved for piping a few swirls on the top to which I added some whole walnuts. A perfect result and worthy of any afternoon tea table or fete cake stall.

Vegan Coffee and Walnut Cake

1 ¾ cups plain flour

1 cup white sugar

1 sachet levure chimique

½ tsp salt

1 cup soy milk

1 tsp extrait de café liquide

⅓ cup colza oil

1 tbsp apple cider vinegar

1. Measure the soy milk into a jug and add cider vinegar. Allow to stand until curdled and

lumpy.

2. Mix all dry ingredients in large bowl

3. Pour oil and coffee extract into milk mix, stir

4. Add wet ingredients to dry

5. Mix really well, use a balloon whisk to ensure the batter is smooth and silky

6. Pour into two greased and lined 7” round tins

7. Bake in pre-heated oven at 180c for 30 minutes

8. When cool, sandwich together with vegan walnut buttercream made from 1 cup of sucre glace, 1 tsp coffee extract, 1-2 tsp soy milk, ½ tablespoon vegan butter/spread, mixed to consistency of buttercream-type filling and then stir in half a cup of finely chopped walnuts.