Peapod and coffee cake.

A stunning sweet taste this week - peas fresh from the garden. Ok, so there was only one peapod that survived the slugs and snails in all their destruction this Summer, but it was perfectly formed and ever-so-pretty. The tiny peas tasted even better than they looked - sweet and crisp.

Earlier this week I made a visit to Marceline armed with homemade coffee cake. In a world of coffee sweet/cake haters, we share a love of coffee confectionery! Yummy!

What a glorious cake. The icing looked a little dodgy, but it tasted amazing (see recipe below) and the coffee flavour was just right. I’ve never understood why anyone would dislike coffee cake and always wonder if this is just a UK thing? What does the rest of the world think of coffee cake/sweets?

Here’s the recipe for Mocha Cake Squares, as found here. Read on to see what I changed.

Mocha Cake Squares

Ingredients

• 225g self raising flour
• 225g butter, softened
• 225g caster sugar
• 1 1/2 teaspoons of baking powder
• 1 1/2 teaspoons of cocoa powder
• 4 eggs, beaten
• 2 heaped tablespoons of instant coffee dissolved in 3 tablespoons of boiling water
• Icing:
• 150g good quality white chocolate
• 175g icing sugar
• 3 tablespoons of butter, softened
• 3 tablespoons of milk

Preparation method

1. Preheat oven to gas mark 4 (180 degrees C)
2. Grease and line a shallow rectangular tin (approx. 10 inch x 7 inch)
3. Sift the flour, baking powder and cocoa into a bowl and mix.
4. Add the caster sugar, beaten eggs, softened butter and coffee mixture and mix well by hand or with an electric mixer until smooth.
5. Spoon the mixture into the tin and flatten the top.
6. Bake in the oven for approx. 40 mins until firm and springy (check after 25minutes, my oven seemed to cook it perfectly after 30minutes).
   
7. Leave to cool in the tin for 10 minutes then tip out on to a wire rack and remove the lining paper.
8. Whilst the cake is cooling, make the icing.
9. Break the white chocolate into pieces and place in a bowl with the icing sugar, butter and milk.
10. Place in the microwave on medium heat for 30 seconds or until the chocolate has melted and the mixture is smooth (I melted mine in a glass bowl over a pot of boiling water).
    
11. Spread mixture on top of cake and dust with cocoa powder if desired.
12. Cut cake into squares, serve!

For the icing, I do recommend using less butter and milk. Perhaps 1 tablespoon of milk, 1 tablespoon of butter and add more if needed. The icing does set, but not until it’s all dripped off the edges of the cake - not so attractive. So use less butter and milk to start off with and build up as needed.

Enjoy!

C♥