Well, life has been just excellent and super busy since moving home from Tofino! I have a blog post in the works about our Nepal trip, as well as posts about sustainability and conversations about the environment! I’m taking some courses online now, so that’s taking up a lot of my writing time. We’ll have to see how rainy November is…it might keep me inside doing work!
I used to make this cake a lot, and then totally forgot about it. It’s based off a recipe I used to use off of the New York Times cooking website. Their website is no longer free, so i’ve made my own recipe. It wasn’t until my 88 grandmother came for a visit that I thought about making it again. It’s a hit. I usually bake by just throwing things in a bowl, so if you’re nervous about the approximate measurements, don’t be! It gives more room for tasting and putting your own spin on the cake. Not much can go wrong with this, try it out!
This cake smells like pancakes when it’s baking, and is popular with young and old!
Cake:
3/4 cup butter
3/4 cup white sugar
1/2 cup maple syrup
3 eggs
1 tbsp vanilla
2 tbsp instant espresso mixed with 2 tbsp hot water (cooled)
2 cups white flour
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1-1 1/2 cups finely chopped walnuts
Icing:
1 cup salted butter
1 tsp vanilla
1-2 tbsp instant espresso mixed in 1 tbsp water (depending how strong you like the coffee flavour)
3-4 cups icing sugar (depending how sweet you like your icing)
1-2 tbsp cream
pinch of salt
1.) Preheat oven to 350. Cream softened butter and sugar, either with beaters or a spoon (I always use a spoon). Add room temperature eggs one by one, as well as the vanilla and maple syrup.
2.) Add one cup of flour to the wet mixture, along with your baking powder and salt. Combine the wet and the dry (I use this method so I don’t have to dirty two bowls).
3.) Add the second cup of flour, along with the coffee mixture and chopped walnuts.
4.) Pour batter into a rather large cake tin and bake at 350 for 40-50 mins (until a toothpick comes out clean).
5.) Cool cake and prepare the icing. Combine the softened butter with the icing sugar, one cup of icing sugar at a time.
6.) Add the salt, vanilla, espresso, and cream to the icing mixture as you go.
7.) When the cake is completely cool, slice it into layers. Last time, my dad and Shane were able to slice the cake into three layers, and it was amazing!
Kendall Creates 